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Woodman's Sausages
Take six pounds of young pork, quite free from skin, gristle, or fat, cut it small, and beat it fine in a mortar. Chop six pounds of beef suet very fine, shred a handful of sage-leaves fine, spread the meat on a clean paste-board, and shake the sage over it; shred the rind of a lemon very fine, and throw it with sweet herbs on the meat; grate two nutmegs, to which put a spoonful of pepper and a large spoonful of salt, throw the suet over, and mix all well together; put it down close in the pot, and when used roll it up with as much egg as will make it smooth and fry in the usual manner.
A skinless sausage meat in the eighteenth-century English style: equal weights of lean pork and suet, seasoned heavily and stored as a mass rather than filled into casings. The proportions are for a large household and the salt is far below what a modern cook would use.
- Halve it, or quarter itTwelve pounds of finished mixture is a working larder's worth. A quarter batch — 1 1/2 lb pork, 1 1/2 lb suet — gives about 20 small patties and is easier to handle.
- Storage is the weak point"Put it down close in the pot" means packing the mixture tightly into a crock kept in a cold larder; potted meats of this kind were often sealed under fat, though this recipe does not say so, and it would have been used within days. This is uncured fresh sausage meat with no nitrite: refrigerate it and cook within two days, or portion and freeze.
- Salt is too low for keepingA large spoonful of salt across twelve pounds is roughly a third of one per cent. Modern fresh sausage runs 1.5 to 2 per cent by weight of meat and fat, which is both a seasoning level and part of why the texture binds. Season to taste by frying a test patty.
- Beating in a mortarPulse the trimmed pork in a food processor in short bursts, keeping everything near freezing so the fat does not smear. Chilled suet can be grated or pulsed separately and folded in by hand.
- Beef suet, not pork fatFresh beef suet from a butcher, not the boxed shredded suet sold for puddings, which is coated in flour and often vegetable-based. Suet gives a firmer, drier crumb than pork back fat; substituting back fat gives a juicier, more familiar sausage.
- Two nutmegs is a great dealTwo nutmegs, in proportion -- Two whole nutmegs are for the full twelve pounds, which works out at about half a nutmeg per three pounds of mixture; scale at that rate and taste, as freshly grated it is still a pronounced flavour. The "spoonful" of pepper is ambiguous — a rounded teaspoon per three pounds is a workable reading, though it is rather more than the single spoonful the original gives for the whole batch.
- Sage and lemonA handful of sage leaves shredded fine is perhaps 15-20 g for the full batch; the pared rind of one lemon, no pith, for a quarter batch. "Sweet herbs" in receipts of this period usually meant some combination of thyme, marjoram, savory and parsley; the recipe does not specify.
- Rolling and fryingAdd just enough beaten egg to make the meat cohere — one egg per pound is ample — and shape into flattened balls. Fry gently in a little dripping over medium heat, about 4 minutes a side, to an internal 160F/71C; high heat splits the suet out before the centre cooks.
Sausage meat kept loose in a crock rather than filled into casings was one ordinary domestic form. This particular formula, six pounds of pork to six of suet with sage, lemon peel and nutmeg, is very close to recipes circulating in English cookery books from the eighteenth century onward, including Hannah Glasse's, and Cassell's compilers reprinted a great many such inherited receipts wholesale. The name is unexplained; 'Woodman' may be no more than a surname. The heavy hand with nutmeg and lemon rind is the older taste: sweet spice in savoury meat was still normal in England well into the nineteenth century, and it faded only as commercial sausage settled on pepper, sage and rusk.