Mangetout: there's nothing awful about French offal dishes

Brits can be a bit sniffy about offal, unlike the French or Italians, let alone the Austrians – I once ate a pig lung in Vienna, with a texture rather like an Aero bar or waffle. You could call it an offal waffle. 

In the UK you’re unlikely to find andouillette or tripes à la mode de Caen on many menus. And even that traditional staple, steak and kidney pie, is a rarity these days. Mind you, I did once eat bull’s testicles in a Spanish restaurant in South Kensington – ‘Macellaio’ in Old Brompton Road - but they’ve since been given the chop and are no longer on offer. 

In Italy, particularly Venice, they cook their liver with red onions, both in thin slices with red wine – ‘Fegato alla Veneziana’, utterly delicious; and in Piedmont you sometimes see ‘Finanziera’ on the menu. It’s not for the faint-hearted. It’s a melange of offal that includes gizzards and entrails as well as veal brawn, sweetbreads, kidneys, chicken liver and testicles, all in a beefy broth with red wine, peas and porcini, topped off with a chicken’s cockscomb. 

Sweetbreads, called ‘riz de veau’ here in France, are well worth a try. Like brains (‘cervelles de veau’) they really are the Victor Ludorum of the offal world. Unlike liver, which has a fairly gutsy taste, sweetbreads and brains are delicate, soft and very tactile in the mouth… the offal version of a marshmallow. 

Andouillette on the other hand is a tad more challenging – the French equivalent of Marmite. You either love it or loathe it. For a start, the haters can’t stand its smell, eager to point out that the French for offal is ‘abats’ conjuring up nasty abattoir images, or worse still ‘déchets’ which means waste or rubbish. 

It was Édouard Herriot, three times Prime Minister of the Third Republic, who famously said: ‘La politique, c'est comme l'andouillette, ça doit sentir un peu la merde, mais pas trop.’

Of course, its admirers rate its smell alongside Chanel No 5. They even have an association specially for its fans: AAAAA which stands for ‘Association Amicale des Amateurs d’Andouillette Authentique’. You’ll know you’re eating a five-star quality andouillette if it’s been awarded the top grade five ‘A’s. 

Andouillette goes back to the Middle Ages. Indeed, there’s a recipe for it in a book written in 1393 titled ‘Ménagier de Paris’ which loosely translates as ‘The Good Wife’s Guide’. As well as recipes, it includes guidance on how to run a home, gardening, morals, social and sexual relations and even falconry. As for the andouillette, not a lot has changed since that 1393 recipe. It’s still the same coarse sausage made from pig’s intestine. 

Once you’ve mastered your andouillette, it’ll be time to move on to the offal aficionado’s absolute top favourites: tête de veau (calf’s head) or better still ‘groin de cochon pané à la moutarde, sauce diable’. I last enjoyed it in Paris, at the Café du Musée in the Marais. Wait for it… yes indeed, it’s the nostrilly end of a pig’s snout. 

Oink, oink!