The Sausage in the Yorkshire Batter (Toad-in-the-hole)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
I opened Hannah Glasse's book, dated 1747,
her pages yellowed like old batter crust.
She wrote of pigeons, small and roasted,
laid in a dish with batter at the bottom,
more poured over, baked till golden.
Why a toad? I wondered, flipping to the notes.
No toads in her recipe, just cheap meat,
pigeons from the dovecote, or whatever scraps.
The name came later, they say, from rural kitchens.

[Chorus]
Why a toad in the hole? The sausages poke out
like amphibians from burrows, eyes wide in the puff.
Batter rises at 425 degrees Fahrenheit,
sizzling in lard from the hearth.
Hannah didn't name it that, but someone did,
in a stone-walled kitchen, 18th century damp,
wooden spoon stirring flour, eggs, milk.
Why a hole? The batter cradles them,
a golden crater holding secrets.

[Verse 2]
Elizabeth Raffald in 1769 echoed it,
her 'Experienced English Housekeeper' on the shelf.
Meat baked in batter, no frogs mentioned,
but folklore whispers of actual toads sometimes,
peeking from the dough in desperate times.
I measured the dish: chipped ceramic, eight inches wide,
heated in the oven till smoking hot.
Pour in the mix, watch it climb the sides,
sausages nestled like stones in a pond.

[Bridge]
The smell: savory pork grease meeting nutty crust,
late afternoon light slanting through the window.
No vehicles rumble here, just the crackle of fire,
hiss of fat on stones below.
Gaps in the record: unnamed cooks, women mostly,
scrubbing the table, trimming with a butcher's knife.
They adapted it, pigeons to pork links,
but history credits the printed word.

[Verse 3]
Strange fact: the visual pun stuck,
toads in burrows, grotesque and whimsical.
No definitive why, just speculation,
folk tales filling the holes in evidence.
I report: it's hearty supper, post-labor meal,
in that 1750s farmhouse, cool air contrasting heat.

[Chorus]
Why a toad in the hole? The sausages poke out
like amphibians from burrows, eyes wide in the puff.
Batter rises at 425 degrees Fahrenheit,
sizzling in lard from the hearth.
Hannah didn't name it that, but someone did,
in a stone-walled kitchen, 18th century damp,
wooden spoon stirring flour, eggs, milk.
Why a hole? The batter cradles them,
a golden crater holding secrets.

[Outro]
That's the report on toad-in-the-hole.
No real toads, just metaphor baked in.