The people of Saint-Etienne know that sarasson is a fresh cheese, eaten with potatoes or used as a sauce. For the others, I’ll explain: it’s a cheese that can be tasted in savory or sweet version. You can add chervil-type herbs, for example, shallots, salt and pepper.
Initially, this product comes from butter making, in the farms of Forez, where piglets were raised: the skimmed milk was used to raise these animals and the cream was churned to be transformed into butter. At the bottom of the churn, there remained the buttermilk which was heated to a high temperature. Once drained in a cloth, it formed the baratton or sarasson, which took the appearance of whipped cream cheese, with a slightly sour taste. In 1934, a famous Lyonnais chef reworked the sarasson recipe and obtained a fresh cheese, called “cervelle de canuts”, a nod to the silk workers who had also been eating this cheap cheese for a long time.
We stay in cheese and foods that stick to the body on the other side of the Lozère with aligot, this historic dish from the Aubrac plateau, which is more than consistent! I’m not sure our runners get it during the race… It’s a mix of mashed potatoes, cream and fresh tome, with a very special spinning texture… so much so that aligot is nicknamed the “ribbon of friendship”!
But where does this name aligot come from? We are in the 12th century, at the Monastery of Saint-Chély d’Aubrac, located on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. The custom for hungry pilgrims is to knock on the door of the monks to ask for something to eat. At the time, we communicated a lot in Latin. And “something”, in Latin, is “aliquid”. This “aliquid” gave “aligot”. It doesn’t look exactly like the one you know, in those days, it’s a simple mixture of bread crumbs and fresh tome cheese, moistened with broth. A few centuries later, the potato discovered in the New World arrived in Europe, the monastery disappeared, but cow-cheese makers still make the tome and perpetuate the tradition. And then, in the 18th century, a bad wheat harvest changed the recipe in an unexpected way: breadcrumbs are replaced by potatoes !
Today, aligot is a real festive dish, present in regional markets and in traditional festivals, such as the festival of transhumance, that is to say the migration of herds from winter pastures to summer pastures. With the great festival of the passage of the runners, no doubt: the aligot will not be forgotten during this great sporting transhumance!