Match of the week

Treacle tart with Ledaig 10 year old malt whisky

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on January 7 2019 at 10:15

Occasionally you come across a pairing so brilliant, so simple that you wonder why you’ve never thought of it before and so it was on Saturday evening.

We’d been talking about whisky and my friend Nick had been saying I should try his 10 year old Ledaig from the Tobermory distillery on the Isle of Mull which he impressively pronounced correctly as lech-ig (for an explanation see this invaluable post on the blog Cask Notes. I’m glad he did - I’d have been going round pronouncing it le-dayg for ever more.)

My friend Andy (cookery writer Andrea Leeman) had made a traditional treacle tart* which is made not with treacle but golden syrup and I wondered if that might be a good opportunity to try the whisky rather than waiting until after dinner. And so it proved.

The whisky tastes (to me) like a cross between a lowland and an island whisky with traces of peat (although it’s described on some sites as heavily peated) and a charming sweet heathery character that chimed in perfectly with the tart making it even more of a treat.

I don’t think a richer sherried whisky like The Macallan would work as well though I’m thinking it *would* be good with a pecan pie. Either would make a great dessert for Burns Night.

* there's a similar recipe from James Martin on the BBC website

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