Home › Some Swell Sandwiches › Epsom Downs Bookmaker's Special
Epsom Downs Bookmaker's Special
A chopped mixed grill of meats and giblets such as liver, heart, and kidneys, with plenty of mustard, between slabs of buttered bread, has been the classic outside snack of busy British bookies ever since the Epsom Downs track was laid.
The original gives no quantities, no times and no temperatures, so treat it as an assembly note rather than a formula. Everything hinges on cooking the offal properly and chopping it while it is still warm.
- What a mixed grill means hereThe recipe names liver, heart and kidney and does not say from what animal; lamb offal is the usual assumption. Cooked under a hot broiler rather than baked: British "grill" is the American broiler, on the top rack, high heat.
- DonenessLiver, heart and kidney are all offal rather than whole-muscle cuts, and liver in particular is a known carrier of Campylobacter, so cook the pieces through rather than leaving them pink at the centre. Liver taken much past done turns chalky and metallic, so watch it closely.
- Prepare the kidneysHalve lamb kidneys and cut out the white core with scissors before cooking. Some cooks soak them in milk or salted water for twenty minutes to soften the ammoniac edge; drain and pat very dry or they will steam instead of browning.
- Chop warm, not hotLet the meats rest five minutes, then chop them coarsely on a board so the juices are caught and worked back in with the mustard. Chopping straight from the heat drives off too much moisture and the filling goes dry in the bread.
- The mustardThe original specifies none, but English mustard, made up from powder or from a jar, is the likely intent: sharply hot and thin. Dijon or a mild yellow mustard will need a larger quantity.
- Bread and butterSlabs means thick-cut white or a plain farmhouse loaf, buttered right to the edges. The butter is structural: it keeps the offal juices from soaking the crumb before the sandwich is eaten.
- QuantityThe original gives none. As a working estimate, about 6 oz of mixed offal per sandwich once trimmed, which fills two thick slices generously. A lamb's liver, one heart and two kidneys will make roughly four to six substantial sandwiches, depending on the size of the liver.
- Eating itThis is meant to be built at the grill and eaten within the hour, warm. If it must travel, wrap in paper rather than plastic so the crust does not sweat.
Epsom Downs on the Surrey chalk has hosted the Derby since 1780, and the course has always drawn a crowd that stood in the open all day: bookmakers working the rails, tic-tac men, and the vast free-admission throng on the Hill. Food there came from carts and hampers, not tables, and offal was the natural filling for a working man's sandwich, being cheap, quick over a portable grill, and rich enough to hold someone through an afternoon. The claim that this particular sandwich dates from the laying out of the track is the sort of thing said rather than documented; what is solid is that chopped grilled liver, heart and kidney with fierce English mustard belongs to a long British tradition of eating offal hot and standing up, from the pie-and-mash shops to the racecourse rails. Its appearance in a book on outdoor cooking is a reminder that the grill was portable equipment long before the suburban patio existed.