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Sausage Rolls
Take half a sausage cut lengthwise for each roll. Enclose the half in pastry six inches square and an eighth of an inch thick. Pinch the edges securely, and then bake the rolls on a baking-sheet in a well-heated oven. They may be served hot or cold. Or take equal weights of cold dressed chicken and tongue, or cold roast veal and ham. Mince the meat finely, and season well with salt, cayenne, and powdered sweet herbs. The latter may be omitted, if not liked. Press the mince together, and enclose it in a puff-paste, or good pastry that is large enough to contain it. Bake in a well-heated oven. These rolls are especially adapted for pic-nic parties. Time to bake, half an hour for fresh meat, fifteen minutes for cooked meat.
Two fillings under one heading: raw sausagemeat in pastry, and a seasoned mince of cooked meats for travelling. The instructions are terse even by Cassell's standards, so a few numbers help.
- "A well-heated oven"Read this as 425F (220C). Puff paste needs the initial blast to lift; a slack oven gives grey, sodden layers and leaks the fat out of the sausage.
- Cut lengthwise, not crosswiseThe instruction to split suggests a sausage larger than most modern links. With a standard supermarket sausage it is easier to skin two and roll the meat into a single long finger of filling for a strip of pastry — the same result with fewer seams.
- Pastry sizeSix inches square at an eighth of an inch is generous. Roll the pastry thin, brush the overlapping edge with water or beaten egg, and set the roll seam-side down so it does not spring open.
- The doneness that mattersHalf an hour at 425F usually brings raw pork sausage through, but thickness varies. Take the centre of the meat to 160F (71C) on a probe; pastry can look finished several minutes before the filling is.
- Cold dressed chicken and tongue"Dressed" here means cooked. Tongue was a standing cold-larder item in this period; cured ox tongue is still sold, though ham or cooked gammon substitutes without complaint. The mince should be tight and slightly moist — a spoonful of the meat's own jelly or a little butter stops it baking dry in fifteen minutes.
- Cayenne and sweet herbs"Powdered sweet herbs" meant a dried mixture, usually along the lines of thyme, marjoram and parsley, sometimes with sage or savoury. Season the mince noticeably above what tastes right warm; these are eaten cold, and cold blunts salt and pepper.
- GlazeThe book says nothing about it, but an egg wash is what separates a pale roll from the burnished picnic article. Brush before baking and vent the top with a knife-tip if the filling is raw.
- Yield and keepingRoughly eight rolls from a pound of sausagemeat and a pound of pastry. Cool completely on a rack before packing, or trapped steam softens the base; eat within a day, and keep them chilled rather than warm if the picnic is a long one.
The sausage roll belongs to the British pastry-and-cold-meat tradition that made picnicking, shooting lunches and railway travel possible before insulated boxes — pastry was as much a container as a food, sealing the meat and surviving a hamper. The second version, using up "cold dressed" chicken, tongue, veal or ham, points to what such recipes were for: cold joints were commonly re-used, and mincing them into a crust with cayenne and dried herbs was one of the familiar ways of doing it. The pairing of chicken with tongue, or veal with ham, recurs across the cold table, in raised pies and potted meats alike, valued for the contrast of pale meat against cured pink. Commercial bakers were selling sausage rolls over the counter before this dictionary appeared.