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Pork Sausages
First prepare the skins. To do this, empty the hog's intestines, cut them into lengths, and lay them in salt and water for three or four days. Turn them inside out once or twice during that time. Rinse and scrape them, and they are ready for use. To make the sausages: Mince finely a pound of lean pork free from skin and gristle. Add one pound of finely-shredded beef suet, two large table-spoonfuls of grated bread, a plentiful allowance of pepper, salt, and finely-chopped sage, and a pinch of powdered allspice and powdered cloves. Fill the skins, and leave plenty of room to tie the ends. Or mince finely a pound and a quarter of fat pork and a pound and a quarter of lean pork. Add three ounces of white pepper, one ounce of salt, a dessert-spoonful of powdered sage, a pinch of powdered mace and a pinch of cloves. Or mince finely two pounds of lean pork and a pound and a half of the inward fat of the pig. Add the crumb of a penny roll which has been soaked in cold water and pressed quite dry, and a seasoning of pepper, salt, powdered sage, grated nutmeg, and lemon thyme. Mix these ingredients thoroughly. Or mince finely one pound of pork, fat and lean together. Add one pound of finely-shredded beef suet, one pound of lean veal, half a pound of finely-grated bread-crumbs, a small nutmeg, grated, six or seven young sage-leaves cut small, or a tea-spoonful of dried and powdered sage, two tea-spoonfuls of salt, a tea-spoonful of pepper, a pinch of powdered savory, a pinch of powdered marjoram, and the rind of half a small lemon cut small. Mix thoroughly, and put the meat into skins. Or mince finely six pounds of pork, fat and lean together; add half a tea-spoonful of pounded sage, half a tea-spoonful of powdered thyme, a tea-spoonful of ground allspice, an ounce of salt, and half an ounce of white pepper. In making sausage-meat it must be remembered that it is most important to keep out all pieces of bone, sinew, and skin. If a larger quantity of the meat has been mixed than is required for immediate use, what is left may be packed closely in a perfectly dry jar, tied tightly with bladder, and kept in a cold place till wanted. Probable cost, pork, 9d. or 10d. per pound.
Five sausage mixtures in one entry, plus instructions for cleaning your own casings. The meat mixtures are sound British fresh sausage; the casing preparation and the leftover-storage note are the two parts to leave in 1890.
- Skip the intestine preparationBuy salted or dry natural hog casings from a butcher or online supplier; they need only a rinse and a 30-minute soak in warm water before use. Cleaning raw intestines by standing them in salt and water for three or four days is unrefrigerated handling of raw offal and is not worth the risk at home.
- The three ounces of white pepper is wrongThe three ounces of white pepper looks wrong -- In the second variation, 3 oz of white pepper to 2.5 lb of meat is roughly twelve tablespoons and would be inedible. A misprint of some kind is the likeliest explanation; three drams (about 2 teaspoons) would be a plausible reading, but this is guesswork. Season peppery sausage at about 1.5 to 2 teaspoons ground white pepper per pound of meat.
- Salt by weight, not by spoonThe 1 oz of salt to 2.5 lb of meat in the second variation works out at about 2.5 percent, on the high side for fresh sausage. The fourth mixture goes the other way: 2 teaspoons of salt for well over 3 lb of meat, suet, veal and crumbs is under 1 percent and will taste flat, so raise it to about 1.5 percent of the total weight.
- Beef suet behaves badlyTwo of these mixtures use shredded beef suet as the fat. Suet is hard and high-melting; it does not emulsify with lean pork the way pork back fat does, and the sausages come out crumbly and dry-mouthed. Pork back fat or fatty shoulder at 25 to 30 percent of the total gives the texture a modern eater expects.
- Everything must be coldChill the meat, the fat and the grinder parts until near freezing before mincing, and keep the bowl over ice while mixing. Warm fat smears rather than cuts, and smeared fat renders out in the pan and leaves the sausage grainy.
- Grated bread and the penny rollA penny roll was simply a small bread roll; its weight varied with period and the price of flour, so treat any figure as approximate. Use a modest handful of soft crumb, soaked in cold water and squeezed dry. "Grated bread" is dry breadcrumb, which is not interchangeable by volume with the soaked crumb, so measure the two separately.
- Do not store it the way the book saysPacking surplus raw sausage meat into a jar sealed with bladder and keeping it in a cold place is a pre-refrigeration compromise, not a preservation method. Ground raw pork keeps one to two days at 40F/4C or a couple of months frozen.
- Yield and cookingThe first mixture makes about 2 lb of sausage meat, roughly eight sausages of standard size. No cooking is given anywhere in the entry: fry or bake gently, 400F for oven cooking, until the centre reaches 160F/71C, and do not prick the skins.
Cassell's gives five mixtures rather than one. The word itself comes through Old French from Latin salsus, salted, though a fresh sausage like these is barely salted at all by preserving standards — it was made to be eaten within days, from the trimmings of a pig. The two markers here are thoroughly English: sage as the dominant herb, and bread as a deliberate ingredient rather than an adulteration. British butchers built cereal into the recipe, first as soaked breadcrumb and later as the dried rusk still used in commercial bangers. The beef suet in two of these mixtures also points to thrift rather than taste: suet was cheap, kept well and stretched the pork, which the entry prices at ninepence or tenpence a pound.