If you know what this is I will … hmm … say ‘knickers’ to an archdeacon.
It’s a chimney, about eighteen metres high, used for smoking sausages. Specifically sausages made in the Jura on the extreme eastern border of France with Switzerland. I used to drive across this range years ago on the way to ski resorts. When I was much younger, time was a precious commodity and holidays were not to be squandered. We’d leave the City on a Friday evening and drive hell for leather to a channel ferry and across France, hoping to arrive in time to be on the snow on Saturday morning. We took turns to drive and, to stay awake, the in-car music was ‘driver’s choice’. I will never forget trying to sleep when Madness were at full volume inches from my head.
Madness are an English ska and pop band from Camden Town, North London, who formed in 1976. One of the most prominent bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s two-tone ska revival, they continue to perform with six of the seven members of their original line-up. (Wikipedia)
If you are British (inc Irish) you may take a robust line on sausages – they are the best in the world. We know that the decline of the US in the world order is because of a lack of sausage. We also know that on the continent there are dodgy sausages comprising the parts of a donkey that cannot even be turned into a burger. But I’m broad-minded and ordered this starter for lunch on Friday.
The sausage is Morteau. Not only is it 100% pork but the piggies must take their nourishment at an altitude above 600 metres in the Jura mountains.
The pork is smoked in a tuyé, the chimney of which is above. The sausage must be smoked for at least 48 hours, the tuyé fuelled by sawdust from conifer and juniper wood.
For so many years I wondered what has been the cause of the United States’ decline in the world order and now I know–a lack of really good sausages! Thank you so much Christopher for getting to the bottom of this mystery!
Yup, too many hot baths did for the Roman Empire and lack of sausage undermines the United States. When I lived in NY in 1983 there was a secret shop that sold Marmite and sausages so us Brits could stay strong.