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Bath Chap, Minced, with Eggs
Make some rounds of hot buttered toast, lay one fried egg on each, and surround it with finely minced Bath chap which has been seasoned with cayenne pepper and made hot. Serve at once, garnished with watercress. Probable cost, 9d. per pound.
A savoury of the breakfast-and-supper sort, assembled from a cooked cured pig's cheek. Everything hinges on the chap already being cooked and cold before you touch it.
- What a Bath chap isThe cured, boiled and usually breadcrumbed lower jaw and cheek of a pig, sold ready to eat and eaten cold, like ham. It is not a raw cut to be cooked from scratch here; the recipe assumes you have one in the larder or a few slices from the grocer.
- Sourcing a substituteBath chap is rare outside British butchers who make it. Any well-cured, fully cooked pork cheek, a thick slice of good gammon, or even sliced ham of decent quality will mince to the same effect. Avoid anything watery or mildly cured; the point is concentrated salt-pork flavour against the bland egg.
- "Made hot"Warm the minced meat gently in a little butter over low heat, just until steaming. It is already cooked and heavily cured, so any real frying dries it into salty grit.
- Trim the fat ratioA chap is a fatty cut and the crumbed rind is often thick. Cut away most of the outer coating and keep roughly a quarter fat to three-quarters lean before mincing, or the warmed mince turns greasy on the toast.
- Mincing"Finely minced" means knife-chopped to something like coarse couscous, not a paste. A food processor pulsed three or four times will do it; run continuously and you get pâté.
- CayenneThe chap is already salty, so a pinch per portion is plenty, and no further salt should be needed.
- The eggsFry to a set white and a soft yolk; the yolk is the sauce for the mince. Have the toast buttered and the mince hot before the eggs go in the pan, since the assembly must reach the table immediately.
- Yield and costThe original gives none. Reckon on one round of toast, one egg and about 2 oz of minced chap per person. The '9d. per pound' appears to refer to the chap rather than to a finished portion.
The Bath chap is the cured lower jaw of a pig, split, brined, boiled, and rolled in browned breadcrumbs to give it the familiar cone-shaped, russet-coated look on a butcher's slab. The name is generally traced to the city of Bath, and is often linked in later accounts to the long-jawed Gloucestershire Old Spot type of pig raised in the surrounding country, though this association is traditional rather than documented. The dish sits among the small savouries a household could put together from cold cured meat with no fresh cooking beyond an egg, and the price note is given per pound of the chap rather than per serving. It belongs to the same family as the devilled and minced meats that fill Victorian cookery books, where cayenne and a green garnish were used to dress up cold larder meat for breakfast, high tea or a late supper.