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Liver Sausages
Take a pig's liver, uncooked. Mince finely, bruise it, and afterwards rub it through a colander. Mix with it half its weight in boiled pork, finely minced, and add half a pound of fat bacon chopped small. Season rather highly with salt, pepper, and powdered cloves. Three-parts fill some thick skins with the mixture; put them into boiling salt and water, and let them simmer very gently. A little pounded onion or powdered sage may be added, if the flavour is liked. The sausages may be eaten either cold with bread and butter, or hot. If eaten hot they do not require boiling before they are fried. Time, half an hour to simmer. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A fresh liver sausage of the cooked-then-cooled type, closer to a coarse German Leberwurst than to a breakfast link. The original gives weights for the bacon only, so the proportions have to be built out from the liver.
- The hinge: keep the water below a boilSimmer the filled casings at 175-185F. A rolling boil swells the forcemeat, splits the skins, and empties the sausages into the pot. Half an hour at a bare tremble is right for sausages of ordinary thickness.
- Working out the quantitiesA whole pig's liver varies a good deal, commonly 2-3 lb, so 'half its weight in boiled pork' has to be scaled to the liver in hand; the 8 oz of fat bacon is the one fixed quantity. The recipe names the seasonings - salt, pepper and powdered cloves, 'rather highly' - but gives no amounts: figure about 2 percent salt by total weight, a teaspoon of pepper and a scant teaspoon of ground cloves for every 3 lb of mixture.
- Rubbing through a colanderThis means forcing the minced raw liver through a sieve to remove the tough connective tissue and ducts, not draining it. A food processor plus a medium-mesh sieve does the same job in a fraction of the time.
- Skins'Thick skins' most likely means hog casings, though the larger beef middles would also answer the description; either are sold salted, so rinse and soak them in warm water for half an hour before filling. The instruction to fill only three-parts full is not optional, since the mixture expands as it heats.
- DonenessCook to an internal temperature of 160F at the thickest point. Liver forcemeat sets firm and loses its raw purple-red colour when done; if the centre is still soft and bloody, it needs longer.
- Boiled porkMost likely leftover boiled belly, hock or shoulder from a previous meal, which would explain why the recipe specifies it already cooked. Any cooked fatty pork works; lean loin makes the sausage dry.
- Frying and keepingOnce simmered, the sausages are fully cooked, hence the note that they need no boiling before frying. There is no cure or nitrite here, so treat them as fresh cooked meat: refrigerate and eat within two or three days, or freeze.
- Yield and costFive or six servings, as stated. The 1s. 6d. reflects offal's status as one of the cheapest butcher's items of the period.
Liver sausage sits at the frugal end of the pig-killing tradition, where the perishable offal had to be used within a day or two of slaughter while the hams and sides went into cure. Cassell's places it among the plain domestic charcuterie an English cook of the 1870s-90s was expected to manage at home, alongside black pudding and brawn, and its seasoning of cloves — with sage as an optional addition — has loosely been associated with the continental liver sausages of German and Alsatian butchery. The instruction that it may be eaten cold with bread and butter tells you its real place in the household: a cheap savoury for supper or the cold table, made without cure or nitrite and so to be eaten within a few days of making.