Luncheon meat is one of the best illustrations of the British relationship with food; call something Luncheon Meat, and it’s sold as a product in the supermarket’s budget range at £4 a kilo; call it Jagdwurst, Stuttgarter, Schinkenwurst or Mortadella, and it costs five times as much!

We just don’t value our own British products. Admittedly, the budget Luncheon Meat has a little less actual meat than its fancy-named counterparts, but this doesn’t have to be so. If it were held in higher esteem and commanded a higher price like its continental counterparts, this could be changed.

This luncheon meat is not an easy project; it has quite a few stages. You’ll need a mincer/grinder, sausage stuffer, and a fairly robust food processor. You also need scales that measure in grams. This recipe needs accurate scales to measure small amounts of chemicals. These can be bought on sites such as Amazon – I use a Uniweigh Digital Pocket Scale – they’re about £15. You’ll also need cure #1, sodium ascorbate or erythorbate and citric acid.

I wrote about Polony back in 2013 and said that I wasn’t happy with my recipe and that it needed more work. It got forgotten about and life got in the way.

I’ve now had a chance to revisit it. The recipe below is an amalgamation of ones in old books, mainly those by Frank Gerrard, such as The Book of the Meat Trade. I’ve looked at 11 recipes in all; there are startling similarities between some of them – I guess that plagiarism was alive and well back then!

I know that “self-praise is no praise”, but I’m pleased with the result. The texture’s fine; it was too soft before. The spicing is fine as is, but I’m going to reduce the cinnamon slightly next time. I’ve put the amended amount below.