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Sausages, Fried, with Apples
Take half a pound of sausages and six apples. Slice four of the apples into pieces as thick as a five-shilling piece, and cut the remaining two into quarters. Fry them, with the sausages, of a fine light brown, and lay the sausages in the centre of the dish and the apples round.
A four-line Victorian supper dish that assumes you know how to fry a sausage. The gaps worth filling are the coin measurement, the order of cooking, and the fact that half a pound feeds two people, not four.
- "As thick as a five-shilling piece"The five-shilling piece was the silver crown, a large coin roughly 3 mm thick. Cut the rings about an eighth of an inch — thin enough to brown and soften in the pan in a few minutes, thick enough not to collapse.
- Quantities and yieldHalf a pound of sausages is roughly four large or six small links; with six apples this serves two generously, or three at a pinch. The apple-to-meat ratio is high, apples being the cheaper of the two ingredients.
- Cook the sausages firstStart the sausages in a cold or barely warm heavy pan over moderate heat and let them render, turning, for 12-15 minutes. Then lift them out, keep them warm, and fry the apples in the fat left behind. That fat is the whole point of the dish.
- Sausages need an internal temperatureVictorian recipes judge by colour alone. Fresh pork sausage should reach 71C/160F in the centre; a fine light brown outside can be reached long before that over a fierce heat.
- The two quartered applesQuarters take considerably longer than thin slices, so put them in the pan several minutes ahead, cut side down, and add the rings after. Otherwise the rings turn to sauce while the quarters are still raw.
- Which applesA firm variety holds its shape: Braeburn, Cox, Granny Smith, or any russet. Bramleys and other cookers will fall apart into a purée, which is pleasant but not what the arrangement on the dish requires.
- Peeling and seasoningThe original says nothing either way. Leave the skins on the rings for colour and structure; core them with a small cutter. A pinch of salt on the apples, and pepper, keeps the plate from tipping into dessert.
- ServingSausages banked in the centre, apples around the rim, is a period presentation and works. Mashed potato or plain bread and butter is the usual accompaniment.
Pork and apple is one of the oldest pairings in English cooking, resting on the plain fact that both come ready at the same point in the year: apples are picked from late summer through autumn, and the pig was traditionally killed once the weather turned cold. Sausages made from the trimmings were among the first things eaten from a slaughtered pig, being perishable, and fried apple was the obvious partner. Cassell's Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for middle-class households in the later nineteenth century, treats the dish as a simple fried one rather than anything elaborate no sauce, no garnish beyond the apples themselves. The five-shilling piece used as a measure for thickness is a reminder of how much Victorian recipe writing is often said to have depended on coins in the reader's pocket: crowns, half-crowns and sixpences appear in these books as rulers, apparently because few kitchens owned one.