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Sausages, Veal
Take any quantity of lean veal with half its weight in fat pork. Mince the two separately, then mix them, and pound the mixture in a mortar till it is quite smooth. Season with salt, pepper, and powdered mace, form it into cakes about three-quarters of an inch thick, flour these well, and fry them in plenty of hot fat. Drain them, and serve very hot. Time to fry, about ten minutes. Probable cost, sausages, 1s. 1d. per pound.
A skinless sausage — forcemeat shaped into patties rather than piped into casings. The whole thing hinges on keeping the mixture cold while you work it.
- The ratioTwo parts lean veal to one part fat pork by weight, so a third of the mixture is fat pork — a generous fat proportion, which is what keeps such a sausage juicy. Ask for fatback or unsmoked pork belly; commercial ground pork is far leaner and will not substitute one-for-one.
- Keep it coldPounding in a mortar generates heat, and warm fat smears rather than emulsifies, giving a greasy, crumbly patty. Chill the meat and the bowl, and if you use a food processor work in short pulses and stop while the mixture is still cold to the touch.
- The mortar, translatedSustained work with a pestle produces the smooth, fine-textured paste the recipe wants. A food processor does it far faster; a stand mixer with the paddle gives a coarser, more rustic result that is also perfectly good.
- Seasoning quantitiesNone are given. For each pound of mixture, start with 1½ teaspoons fine salt, ½ teaspoon white pepper and ¼ teaspoon ground mace. Fry a teaspoon of the mixture as a tester and adjust before shaping the rest.
- MaceThe outer covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and less sweet than nutmeg itself. Ground mace loses its perfume quickly, so buy small quantities; nutmeg at two-thirds the amount is the nearest substitute.
- FryingThree-quarters of an inch is thick for a patty, and ten minutes total in fat over medium heat is about right — five minutes a side. Veal and pork should reach 160F / 71C in the centre. Too hot a pan will brown the flour crust long before the middle sets.
- The flouringDredging is not optional here: it gives the crust and keeps the patties from sticking, since there is no casing. Flour just before frying, or the coating goes damp and gluey.
- YieldA pound of veal with half a pound of pork makes about eight patties, enough for four. The mixture can be made a day ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator.
- The price note'Probable cost, sausages, 1s. 1d. per pound' is one of the book's routine costings, a late-nineteenth-century British price per pound.
The entry sits under Sausages, and the logic of the period is visible in it: veal is almost devoid of fat, so it was routinely bulked out with fat pork to make it behave. The skinless form — pounded forcemeat floured and fried as a cake — needs no casings, no stuffing horn and no curing, which put it within reach of any kitchen with a mortar. Mace was a common seasoning for veal forcemeats in English cookery. Recipes of this kind faded in Britain along with veal itself, which fell out of favour over the twentieth century on grounds of both cost and, later, welfare.