Home › The Principles of Cookery › Sausages, Boiled
Sausages, Boiled
Put the sausages into boiling water, let them boil up once, then draw the saucepan to the side, and let the sausages simmer gently until done enough. Drain them, and serve upon toast. Time to boil the sausages, ten to fifteen minutes, according to size. Probable cost, 1s. per pound.
A method rather than a formula, and the one thing it gets right is heat control: sausages go into boiling water, then the pan comes off the fierce heat. Everything else needs translating.
- The hinge: never let it boilThe hinge: don't let it keep boiling -- A rolling boil bursts the casings and drives the fat out into the water, leaving dry, crumbly meat. The recipe lets the pan boil up once, then draws it to the side; hold the water at a bare shiver for the rest of the cooking time.
- What "sausages" meant hereWhat "sausages" probably meant here -- Fresh uncooked sausages, most likely pork or beef in natural casing, of the kind sold loose by weight. This method is wrong for anything already cooked or smoked, and wrong for coarse dry-cured sausage.
- DonenessTen to fifteen minutes is about right for standard links, but judge by an instant-read thermometer in the centre: 160F for pork or beef, 165F for chicken or turkey sausage. Thick continental links may want closer to twenty.
- To prick or notSome period recipes call for pricking the skins; it lets fat and juice escape and is unnecessary at simmering temperature. Left whole, the sausage steams inside its own casing.
- The pallor problemWater-cooked sausages emerge grey. If the look bothers you, drain them well and give them two or three minutes in a hot dry pan to colour the skins, though the original stops at draining and serving.
- Served upon toastToast set under the sausages to catch the juices. The recipe specifies nothing further about the bread.
- Yield and costReckon two to three links per person; a pound serves three. The "1s. per pound" is the book's own estimate of a retail price and is best read as a rough guide to what a shop might charge.
Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for middle-class kitchens in the 1870s and reprinted for decades after, carries the method as an alphabetical recipe entry headed "Sausages, Boiled". Sausage in this period was fresh, made in small batches from trimmings and bread or rusk filler, and sold to be eaten within a day or two — so a poaching liquid, rather than a hot pan, was a reasonable way to cook something whose fat content and coarseness varied from shop to shop. Serving on toast was the standard economical presentation: the bread stretched the meat and absorbed what escaped it.