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Boiled Sausages with White Wine
For half a dozen sausages take a half-pint of white wine; pepper the sausages, cover, and let them boil gently for ten minutes; then take up the sausages, add a small cupful of poulette sauce to the stock, and boil rapidly three or four minutes.
Remove from the fire and add a tablespoonful each of chopped parsley and butter. When the butter has melted, pour the sauce over the sausages on a hot dish, and serve quickly.
A quick braise rather than a true boil: the wine both cooks the sausages and becomes the base of the sauce. Two details govern the result — the internal temperature of the sausages and the handling of the poulette sauce.
- Half a pint of wineThat is one US cup (about 240 ml) of white wine, or nearer 285 ml if the source is using imperial measure — enough to come partway up six sausages in a lidded pan, not to submerge them. Turn them once during the ten minutes so both sides sit in the liquid.
- Poulette sauceA velouté (butter-flour roux slackened with white stock) finished with egg yolk, cream and lemon juice. A "small cupful" is roughly 1/3 to 1/2 cup. If you have none made, a few spoonfuls of thickened stock enriched with a yolk and a squeeze of lemon stands in.
- Do not boil the finished sauceThe instruction to boil rapidly three or four minutes works only for reducing wine and plain velouté. Once egg yolk is in the pan, hard boiling scrambles it. Reduce the wine first, then whisk the poulette in off the heat or over the barest simmer.
- Cook the sausages throughTen minutes at a gentle boil will not reliably bring a thick modern pork sausage to 160F/71C at the centre. Check with a thermometer and give them longer if needed, keeping the liquid below a rolling boil so the casings do not split.
- Sausage choiceThe recipe assumes a plain fresh pork sausage of moderate size, unsmoked and not heavily spiced. Anything already cooked or smoked needs only warming through and will make the sauce salty.
- Finishing butterA tablespoon of butter swirled in off the fire, as directed, thickens and glosses the sauce; cold butter added in pieces works best. Do not let the pan return to a boil afterwards or the sauce separates.
- YieldSix sausages serve two generously or three modestly. Serve with something to catch the sauce — mashed potato, boiled rice, or bread.