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Food nevertheless continued to serve as a focus for the Lafranchis, who, similar
to most Italian speakers, had a favourite family recipe for bullboars. Passed on to the
(Scottish) family who took over their business, and stiU being used by a Newstead
butcher at the end of the twentieth century, it revealed the power of food to link
people of both different culture and generations:
Ingredients
60 lbs lean beef
40 lbs pork
3 lbs salt
Vi lb cinnamon
V2 lb ground spice
nutmeg ~ small cloves
garlic
saltpetre
red wine
BoU wine, saltpetre and garlic. Cool and strain. Mix meat with other
ingredients. Mix m wine. Add dry ingredients.
Several locals complained years later that the bullboars produced on a commercial
basis were not of the same quality as those from the homes of the early Italian and
Swiss families.^* This superior quality was achieved, however, by a traditional method
of animal slaughter which few twentieth century butchers found practical or
acceptable. A vein was cut at the side of the beast's neck causing it to bleed slowly to
death, a practice which the Italian speakers claimed enhanced the flavour of the meat.
While many locals abhorred this procedure, bullboars gained wide acceptance in the
community and were included in many people's diets; many years later some
Australian-bom locals thought that bullboar was an Italian word and not one merely
describing the sausage's ingredients.^' Like most Italian-speaking families the
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