Ham and Offal

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls. He liked thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, a stuffed roast heart, liver slices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencod’s roes. Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine.

JAMES JOYCE, ULYSSES

Despite the fact that the French have for centuries rated them both for gastronomic pleasure and nutritional value, dishes like tripe and pig’s trotters have long been despised in this country because they have been considered suitable only for poor people. Even during the Second World War when it was vital to encourage people to eat such things because of the shortage of meat, the Minister of Food in a broadcast designed to encourage the use of tripe could not disguise the revulsion in his voice whilst extolling its virtues. In Cork where Declan Ryan and his brother are blazing a trail for real food at the Arbutus Lodge Hotel, they have the courage to put trotters and tripe on their menus alongside the classic dishes of modern cuisine. That shows real commitment, for too many Irish people can still remember men being paid partly in money but mostly in tripe for a back-breaking week’s work at the docks when Cork was one of the great victualling ports.