Spices, wine and garlic make bull-boar a distinctive sausage. It is a beef and pork sausage produced by the Italian-speaking Swiss population of the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s and has continued to this day.
It was called bull-boar on the goldfields by the English-speaking settlers because it contained both beef and pork in roughly equal proportions.
The sausage is made with wine in which garlic has steeped. It is less fatty than most sausages so can feel slightly dry. It is full of spices such as cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and allspice, so during cooking it releases an aroma like a meaty hot cross bun.
Every family in the district has their own recipe which are all carefully guarded secrets. In many instances, apart from their family name, it is their last link with their Italian-speaking forebears who settled the area. The traditional way of cooking bull-boars is to drop them into a pot of water and then bring it to simmering point for 10 minutes.
Today, bull-boar sausage is made by a handful of local butchers.
And here's the reason for this lesson in culinary heritage.
Each year at the Glenlyon FF&W Fayre Rotary Club of Daylesford run a bull-boar eating competition. No - not how many you can eat, but can you distinguish one from another. They source bull-boars from each of the local four butcheries. Each butchery is assigned a different coloured flag and as patrons eat and appreciate their bull-boar they are invited to drop a flag into a container. Sausage democracy?
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