Home › The Principles of Cookery › Oxford Sausages
Oxford Sausages
Mince very finely one pound of lean veal, one pound of lean pork, and one pound of beef suet. Add three tea-spoonfuls of salt, half a tea-spoonful of cayenne, a tea-spoonful of pepper, and half a pound of stale roll, which has been crumbled and soaked in butter for two or three minutes. Three-parts fill the prepared skins with the mixture, and fry them before serving. If it is preferred that the sausages should be seasoned, add the finely-minced rind of half a lemon, a nutmeg, grated, a table-spoonful of powdered sage, and a small tea-spoonful of lemon thyme, sweet marjoram, and basil. A chopped anchovy is by some persons considered an improvement; but, generally speaking, the sausages are preferred plain. Time to fry, ten or fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 10d. per pound. Sufficient for eight or ten persons.
A fresh sausage of the old English type: veal and pork bound with suet and breadcrumbs rather than fat pork alone. Nothing here is preserved, so treat the mixture as raw meat throughout.
- The hinge: keep everything coldSuet and minced meat are best kept cold (as a rule of thumb, below roughly 12C/54F) or the fat smears and the fried sausage turns greasy and crumbly. Chill the meat, the suet and the mincer parts before you start, and work quickly.
- "Soaked in butter" is oddHalf a pound of crumb will not absorb butter in two or three minutes. Read it as melted butter loosened with a little milk, and add enough liquid that the crumb is moist but not sloppy.
- Stale rollA dry white bread roll with the crust removed, grated or rubbed to crumbs — not dried commercial breadcrumbs, which are much finer and absorb differently. About 225g of crumb to 900g meat is a generous but authentic proportion.
- Beef suetFresh beef suet from a butcher, skinned and finely chopped, not the shredded packet suet coated in flour. If unavailable, hard back fat from pork can be substituted in the same weight.
- CayenneHalf a teaspoon of cayenne in three pounds of meat is noticeable but not fierce by modern palates; the pepper and salt quantities are in normal range. Fry a spoonful of the mixture flat in a pan and taste before filling any skins.
- Prepared skinsNatural hog casings, bought salted, rinsed inside and out and soaked in cool water for half an hour. \