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Italian Sausage
Mince two pounds of lean pork with one pound of fat pork. Season the mixture with salt, mixed spice, coriander seed, and bruised aniseed. When the irgredients are thoroughly blended, moisten the mixture with pig's blood and white wine sufficiently to bind it together, but be careful not to render it too moist. Cut some narrow strips from the best part of a calf's head, mix these with the mince, and put the preparation into sausage-skins. Tie the ends securely, plunge the sausages into boiling water, and boil them gently until done enough. Afterwards dry them in a smoke house, or in a chimney over a wood fire, till they become hard. Time to boil, half an hour.
This is a fresh blood sausage that is boiled and then dry-cured by smoke, and the instructions omit every number that makes such a process safe. It cannot be followed as printed.
- No cure, and no measured saltThe seasoning is given as "salt, mixed spice, coriander seed" with no weights at all, and there is no nitrite or saltpetre. Stuffed, low-acid, low-oxygen casings held at warm temperatures are the classic setting for Clostridium botulinum; modern charcuterie controls it with salt and nitrite weighed to the gram against the weight of the meat.
- Drying in a chimney"In a smoke house, or in a chimney over a wood fire, till they become hard" specifies neither temperature nor duration. A warm chimney holds sausage in the 40-140F range where pathogens multiply, and "hard" is a texture judgement, not a measure of water activity.
- "Boil them gently until done enough"Half an hour in gently boiling water may or may not bring the centre of a thick sausage to a safe temperature, and the recipe gives no internal target. Pork and veal offal mixtures need a verified core temperature, not a clock.
- Pig's bloodBlood is a superb bacterial growth medium and spoils faster than muscle meat. It is used raw here as a binder, with no indication of freshness, chilling or handling.
- Calf's headStrips from the head bring skin, glands and connective tissue that require scrupulous cleaning, and head meat from cattle is subject to regulation in some jurisdictions depending on the animal's age. It is not a cut most people can buy and use casually.
- If you want blood sausageUse a current recipe from a charcuterie source that gives salt and cure percentages, cooking temperatures and storage conditions.
- Reading the unitsFor interest only: the ratio is two parts lean pork to one part fat pork, in the range still commonly used for sausage. Bruised aniseed means seed lightly crushed rather than ground.
Cassell's compiled its dictionary in the 1870s-80s, and the "Italian Sausage" entry reflects what a Victorian writer understood the term to mean: not the fennel-scented fresh pork sausage familiar in North America today, but a spiced, blood-bound, smoke-dried sausage. The entry also shows how such books were written: the process is described as a competent butcher would already know it, with quantities of spice and salt, curing temperatures and holding times left entirely to the reader's judgement. That silence is precisely what makes the recipe unusable now.