Home › The Principles of Cookery › Young Oxford Sausages
Young Oxford Sausages
Take one pound of young pork, fat and lean, without skin or gristle, and one pound of beef suet, chopped fine together; put in half a pound of grated bread, half the peel of a lemon shredded, a nutmeg, grated, six sage-leaves chopped fine, a tea-spoonful of pepper, and two of salt, some thyme, savory, and marjoram, shredded finely. Mix well together, and keep the preparation, pressed close down, in a pan till used. Roll the meat out to the size and shape of common sausages, and fry them in fresh butter of a fine brown, or broil them over a clear fire, and send them to table hot.
A skinless sausage meat, shaped by hand rather than cased, and seasoned in the eighteenth-century Oxford manner with lemon peel and a heavy hand of herbs. Nothing here is difficult, but the proportions and the storage advice both need a modern reading.
- The suet is the hingeA pound of beef suet to a pound of pork 'fat and lean' gives a mixture at least half fat, far richer than any modern sausage. Half a pound of suet to two pounds of meat, or using fatty pork shoulder at about 25-30 per cent fat and dropping the suet altogether, gives a result closer to what a modern palate expects.
- "Young pork"Meat from a young pig, meaning pale, tender and mild. Boneless pork shoulder is the right modern cut; loin alone is too lean once the suet is reduced.
- Grated breadHalf a pound is about 4 cups of fresh soft breadcrumbs from a day-old white loaf, not dried crumbs. Dried crumbs absorb far more liquid and will make the mixture dry and sandy.
- Seasoning by weightA whole grated nutmeg in two pounds of meat is assertive by current standards; half is plenty for most cooks. The salt works out at roughly 2 teaspoons for 2 lb of meat, around 1 per cent, which is on the low side of modern sausage practice.
- Storage"Pressed close down in a pan till used" describes a cold larder and a day or two at most. Refrigerate the mixture covered and use it within two days, or freeze it; there is no cure or preservative in this recipe.
- Binding and shapingWith no egg and no casing, the mixture holds together only if it is cold and well worked. Chill it thoroughly, then roll into cylinders about the thickness of a thumb; a light dusting of flour helps them keep shape in the pan.
- CookingFry gently in butter over medium heat rather than hard, so the interior reaches 160F/71C before the outside blackens; the breadcrumbs and butter both catch quickly. Allow 12 to 15 minutes, turning often.
- YieldTwo pounds of meat plus bread makes roughly 18 to 20 small sausages, enough for six to eight as a breakfast or supper dish.
The Oxford sausage was a recognised type long before this book: a skinless sausage, generally traced to eighteenth-century English cookery, distinguished from its rivals by the lemon peel, nutmeg and the trio of sage, thyme and marjoram, and often made with veal alongside the pork. Being made without a casing, it had to be shaped by hand before cooking, as the recipe directs. The name was well enough established by 1764 to be borrowed for The Oxford Sausage, a collection of university verse, which suggests the sausage was already a local byword.