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Sausages, Baked
As sausages, and especially pork sausages, need to be thoroughly cooked to be wholesome, it is a good plan, when there is time, to bake instead of frying them. Put them in a dripping-tin in a single layer, placing a little fat in the dish with them, and bake in a moderately-heated oven. When they are brown upon one side, turn them upon the other; if they are freshly made they will not need to be pricked. They should be baked very gently. When done enough, lift them out, drain them, make brown sauce for them, and serve very hot. Time to bake, one hour and a half. Probable cost, 1s. 1d. per pound. Sufficient, one pound for three persons.
A sound method buried under a Victorian timing. Baking sausages does give more even cooking than a crowded frying pan, but ninety minutes will leave you with dry, split casings.
- The timing is the problemAn hour and a half belongs to a period when pork was cooked well past what we now consider done. Modern sausages of ordinary thickness are done in 25-35 minutes; cook to an internal temperature of 160-165F and stop there.
- "Moderately-heated oven"Conventionally read today as somewhere around 350F, though the book gives no figure. For sausages, 375-400F browns the skins properly in the shorter time now recommended, with a turn halfway through.
- Dripping-tinA shallow roasting tin or rimmed baking sheet. A single layer with a little space between each sausage is the point of the instruction, otherwise they steam.
- "A little fat in the dish"Modern sausages usually render enough of their own; a teaspoon of oil to stop initial sticking is plenty. Very lean or poultry sausages benefit from a light brushing.
- To prick or notThe advice holds. A well-filled fresh sausage keeps its juices if left alone; pricking is a hedge against casings that have dried and tightened, or fillings packed too loose.
- Brown sauceA cooked flour-and-stock sauce of the period, not the bottled condiment. Deglazing the tin with stock and a little flour gives the same effect with the pan drippings included.
- Yield and costOne pound for three people is a modest Victorian portion by today's standards; allow closer to a pound for two if the sausages are the main dish. The 1s 1d per pound is a period price note, of no use except as a record of what pork cost.
The insistence on thorough cooking is the whole reason this entry exists. Nineteenth-century cooks were warned repeatedly about pork, and trichinosis was identified in the mid-1800s just as sausage-making moved out of the household and into the butcher's shop and the factory, where what went into the casing was anyone's guess. Sausage adulteration was a running scandal of the period. Baking rather than frying had the advantage that the heat was steadier and less dependent on the cook's attention, a real consideration on a coal range where pan temperature swung wildly. The advice survives today for a different reason: it is simply easier to cook a dozen sausages evenly in an oven than in a skillet.