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Sausage Cakes, Soyer's
Chop some lean pork very fine, having previously detached all the skin and bone, and to every pound of meat add three-quarters of a pound of fat bacon, half an ounce of salt, a salt-spoonful of pepper, the quarter of nutmeg, grated, six young green chopped onions, and a little chopped parsley. When the whole is well chopped, put into a mortar and pound well, finishing with three eggs; then have ready a pig's caul, which cut into pieces large enough to enfold a piece of the above preparation the size of an egg, which wrap up, keeping to the shape of an egg, but rather flattened, and broil very gently over a moderate fire.
This is a crépinette: seasoned forcemeat wrapped in caul fat rather than stuffed into a casing. Two things decide whether it works — getting hold of caul, and cooking it slowly enough that the fat renders instead of flaring.
- Caul fatThe lacy fat-veined membrane from around a pig's abdominal organs, often sold frozen by whole-animal butchers and by halal or Chinese butchers. Soak it in tepid salted water until it relaxes, then spread it flat; it tears easily when cold and stiff. Cut it into pieces of roughly 4 inches square, as the recipe directs, sizing them to the portion.
- The fat ratioThree-quarters of a pound of fat bacon per pound of lean pork is very rich by modern taste, and salty besides, since the half-ounce of added salt sits on top of whatever the bacon already carries. Fresh pork back fat gives a milder result; if you use cured bacon, cut the added half-ounce of salt back sharply or the cakes will be inedible.
- Old measuresA salt-spoonful is about a quarter teaspoon. Half an ounce of salt across a pound of meat plus three-quarters of a pound of bacon is about 1.8 percent of the total by weight from the added salt alone, and nearer 3 percent once the bacon's own cure is counted — high either way. A quarter of a whole nutmeg grated is close to half a teaspoon.
- Young green onionsScallions, tops and all, not shallots or spring bulb onions. Six is a generous handful; sweat them briefly in a little butter first if you want them soft in the finished cake.
- The mortarThe pounding is what makes the mixture bind and slice cleanly. A food processor does the same job in short pulses, but keep everything cold and stop as soon as the mass turns tacky — overworked pork fat smears and the cakes weep grease.
- Broil means grillIn this book broiling is cooking over coals or on a grid, not under an oven element. Moderate, steady heat, a few minutes a side depending on thickness; the caul fat drips and will flame over a fierce fire. A heavy pan over medium heat works equally well and crisps the caul into a thin lacquer.
- DonenessFresh pork forcemeat should reach 160F at the centre. The cakes are about 2 ounces each, so they cook through at about the point the outside is well browned — check the first one rather than guessing.
- YieldA pound of pork with its bacon makes roughly 14 cakes, enough for six as a course with potatoes or lentils. The raw mixture is better for resting overnight before shaping; the seasoning settles.
Alexis Soyer (1810-1858) was chef at London's Reform Club and the most publicly visible cook in Victorian Britain — author of The Gastronomic Regenerator and A Shilling Cookery for the People, inventor of assorted kitchen apparatus, and organiser of soup kitchens in Ireland during the Famine and of army cooking in the Crimea. Cassell's, compiling its dictionary decades after his death, still traded on his name as a mark of authority, which is why the attribution stands in the title. The dish itself is French: a crépinette, named for the crépine or caul that encloses it. Caul is often said to have been the sausage-maker's answer to a skinless sausage long before anyone thought to sell such a thing — it holds the shape on the grill, then more or less disappears into the crust.