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Mutton Sausages
A delicate sausage is made from the remains of an underdone leg of roast mutton, or any other joint from which slices can be got without fat. Chop a pound of lean underdone mutton and six ounces of beef suet separately; then mix them with four ounces of finely-prepared bread-crumbs and put them into a basin with two dozen oysters bearded and chopped, two anchovies, a seasoning of thyme, marjoram, and powdered mace, and some pepper and salt. Moisten with two beaten eggs, and a little of the anchovy liquor if required. Make into a firm paste, and roll into sausages or make into balls, but the sausage-meat will keep for a few days. Time to fry, seven or eight minutes.
A leftover dish: the mutton is already roasted, so frying is only about setting the egg binding and browning the outside. Everything else follows from that.
- Do not over-fryThe mutton goes in already roasted, if underdone, though the suet, oysters and egg are raw and need the full seven to eight minutes over medium heat to cook through and set the binding; much longer squeezes out the suet and leaves a dry, crumbly interior.
- No casings involvedThese are skinless sausages, shaped by hand. Chill the mixture for half an hour, flour your palms lightly, and roll into fingers about the thickness of a thumb, or into balls. Chilled fat holds the shape in the pan.
- Mutton and its substitutesMutton is sheep over two years old, strong-flavoured and hard to buy outside halal and specialist butchers. Cold roast lamb leg or shoulder works, though the result is milder. Keep to lean slices as directed; roasted fat turns waxy when reheated.
- Beef suetSix ounces of raw beef suet from a butcher, chopped fine or grated frozen, is what the recipe means. Packaged shredded suet, which is stabilised with flour, also works. It supplies all the fat here, so it is not optional.
- Bread-crumbs"Finely-prepared" most likely means dry crumbs rubbed through a sieve rather than soft fresh ones. Four ounces is about a cup of fine dry crumbs; panko is too coarse unless crushed.
- Oysters and beardingTwo dozen oysters would have been small natives; a considerably smaller number of larger modern shucked oysters gives a comparable volume. Bearding is trimming off the dark frilly gill margin. Chop them, and keep the mixture on the dry side -- the recipe calls only for anchovy liquor, and the paste needs to be firm, not wet.
- AnchoviesVictorian anchovies were whole salt-packed fish, saltier and firmer than tinned fillets. Two whole anchovies correspond to roughly four tinned fillets, mashed, or a rounded teaspoon of anchovy paste. The "anchovy liquor" is the pickle from the jar; use drops, not spoonfuls.
- Seasoning quantitiesThe original leaves these open. A quarter teaspoon of ground mace, a teaspoon each of chopped thyme and marjoram, and pepper to taste suit a pound of meat. Salt last, after the anchovies and oyster liquor are in.
- Yield and keepingThe mixture comes to well over two pounds, making roughly twelve sausages, enough for four to six with potatoes or a plain gravy. "Will keep for a few days" predates refrigeration standards: with raw egg and shellfish in it, treat this as one day covered in the fridge, or freeze the shaped sausages.
Cassell's belongs to a long English tradition of what cookery writers called "rìhauffé" cookery — the systematic reuse of cold roast joints. The oysters are the period's signature: until late-nineteenth-century overfishing pushed prices up, oysters were cheap enough in Britain to be used as a seasoning, padding out beefsteak puddings, stuffings and sausages for their salt and savour rather than treated as a luxury. Anchovy served the same purpose, and the pairing of the two with mace is characteristic of English savoury seasoning from the eighteenth century onward. The absence of casings is worth noting: skinless "sausages" of this kind were bound with egg and crumbs and simply rolled by hand.