Яйцо в мясной оболочке: история и варианты приготовления

Boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat

A Scotch egg is a boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat, coated in breadcrumbs and baked or deep fried.

Various origin stories exist. The Oxford Companion to Food gives the first instance of the name as of 1809, in an edition of Maria Rundell's A New System of Domestic Cookery. such as the Mughlai dish called nargisi kofta ("Narcissus meatballs"), in which a boiled egg is encased in a seasoned ground meat mixture and then fried. Other claims include the item having been invented at Fortnums. According to Culinary Delights of Yorkshire, they originated in Whitby, Yorkshire, England, in the 19th century, and were originally covered in fish paste rather than sausage meat. They were supposedly named after William J. Scott & Sons, a well known eatery which sold them. It has also been suggested that they were originally called "scorch" eggs, as they were cooked over an open flame, though according to surviving recipes they were deep fried in lard. 'Scotching' as a culinary process is also sometimes cited as the origin, though what 'scotching' was is open to interpretation, from the inclusion of anchovies to simply mincing meat. Further confusion is added by the large trade in eggs from Scotland in the 19th century, which sometimes involved dipping eggs in a lime powder to preserve them, a process possibly also known as 'scotching'.

Scotch eggs are prepared by hard or soft boiling an egg, wrapping it in sausage meat, and deep frying it. Vegetarian versions have also been made. In 2022, Guinness World Records certified a vegetarian scotch egg as the world's largest. It used an ostrich egg in the center, with a coating made of peas and cheddar cheese. The Harwood Arms, a Michelin starred restaurant in London, started selling a vegetarian scotch egg that uses a plant based meat alternative in 2020, and the next year, the supermarket chain Tesco started selling a vegan version.

A fatty food, a typical sausage coated Scotch egg has about 200 mg dietary cholesterol per 100 grams.