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Oysters, Sausages Of
Large stewing oysters are the best for making sausages. Open two dozen oysters, and mince them finely. Mix with them six ounces of grated bread-crumbs, which have been soaked for a few minutes in the oyster liquor, and six ounces of finely-shredded beef suet. Season the mixture with a salt-spoonful of powdered mace, half a salt-spoonful of salt, half a salt-spoonful of pepper, and a pinch of cayenne, and moisten it with the well-beaten yolks of two eggs. Make up the mixture into small sausages, about three inches long, flour these well, and fry them in hot fat until they are lightly browned. Drain them, and serve piled high on a napkin, and garnished with parsley. This preparation is better for being made two or three hours before it is wanted. Sometimes a small quantity of minced veal is added. Time, seven or eight minutes to fry the sausages. Probable cost, 4s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way of stretching two dozen oysters into a hot savoury course: essentially an oyster forcemeat rolled into skinless sausages and shallow-fried. The instructions are sound, but the measures and the resting time need translating.
- The hinge: chill before fryingThe hinge: rest before frying -- The note that the mixture "is better for being made two or three hours before it is wanted" may be as much about structure as flavour: suet and egg yolk firm in the cold, which helps the sausages hold together in the fat. The recipe does not mention chilling, but shaping and refrigerating before frying is a sensible modern reading.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt-spoon is the small spoon from a Victorian salt cellar, roughly a quarter teaspoon. So the seasoning is about 1/4 tsp mace, 1/8 tsp each salt and pepper, plus a pinch of cayenne. Taste-check by frying a small nugget first, since oyster liquor is already salty.
- Stewing oystersOysters were commonly graded by size, with the larger, coarser ones going for stewing and the smaller ones eaten raw. Any large oyster works here; roughly a pint of shucked oysters with their liquor is an approximate stand-in for two dozen, depending on their size.
- Beef suetSix ounces of shredded raw beef suet is the binder and the fat. Butcher's suet is best, though packet shredded suet works; grate it from frozen if using a solid piece. Cold, hard fat is what keeps the sausages from spreading.
- Bread-crumbsGrated bread-crumbs means crumbs from a stale loaf, coarser and thirstier than commercial dried crumbs. Six ounces is roughly two to three cups loosely packed, depending on how dry the loaf. Soak them in the strained oyster liquor only briefly, they should be damp, not sodden.
- FryingSeven or eight minutes in fat hot enough to brown them lightly, turning to colour all sides. The recipe gives neither a temperature nor a depth of fat. The oysters are cooked well before the outside is browned; longer frying only toughens them.
- Minced vealThe optional veal, which the recipe leaves as "a small quantity", firms the mixture and mutes the oyster. Finely minced pork or chicken thigh does the same job if veal is awkward to buy.
- Yield and servingThree or four as a savoury or first course, giving eight to twelve small sausages. The napkin was there to absorb frying fat; a folded cloth or paper on a warm dish still does the job.
Oyster sausages belong to the long stretch of the nineteenth century when oysters were cheap protein rather than luxury, so plentiful in British and American ports that cooks looked for ways to use them by the pint. The dish is really a forcemeat, in the older sense of a bound, seasoned mince, shaped into links and fried without skins, a technique shared with Victorian veal and chicken sausages. Mace and cayenne are the standard period seasoning for shellfish, recurring across potted and scalloped oyster recipes of the same decades. By the end of the century the abundance the recipe assumes was gone.