Video: How they celebrated Yorkshire Day with a banger

A taste test involving more than 3,300 Yorkshire folk has found a favourite – a spicy pork sausage containing salt, pepper, mace, nutmeg, parsley and ground coriander.

It was unveiled today, Yorkshire Day, by Ilkley butcher David Lishman, who put six of his creations to the taste test.

The Yorkshire Sausage campaign travelled across the county, sizzling over 4,000 sausages in its mission to find Yorkshire’s first official banger.

The winning recipe will be shared with butchers across the county, ensuring everyone will get a taste of Yorkshire’s new staple.

Mr Lishman said: “We have the pick of some of the best tasting produce in the country. For a region blessed with such a well-stocked larder not to have its own namesake sausage was something I was very keen to put right.”

Celebrity chef Rosemary Shrager, who runs a cookery school in North Yorkshire, unveiled the winning sausage in Ilkley.

On tasting the winning banger, she said: “This is delicious. It’s quite a spicy taste; there’s pepper, mace and nutmeg - it’s all coming through.”

Yorkshire Day also marked the launch of a push to get more landowners to plant trees across the county.

The White Rose Forest project says only 5.2 per cent of West Yorkshire is wooded, lagging behind the national average of nine per cent. Grants are being offered to those who come forward with land.

Yorkshire Lib Dem MEP Diana Wallis used Yorkshire Day to appeal to the Bank of England Governor Mervyn King to include a Yorkshire man or woman on a future banknote design. She suggested the Bronte sisters or aviator Amy Johnson.

“Yorkshire has been woefully underrepresented on Bank of England bank notes...”