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Sausages and Potatoes
One may easily transform a homely platter of sausages into a most sightly dish. Prepare plenty of mashed potato, pressing it through a ricer, adding butter, milk and seasoning, then whipping it till light with a fork. Make a bank of the potato in the center of a platter and around it build a wall of potato roses, squeezed through a pastry bag. Set this in the oven to brown lightly. Fry the sausages, pricking them all over to prevent bursting. When the skins are well crisped lay a row of the sausages on the bank of potato and send to the table piping hot. See Page XXVI.
A presentation recipe more than a formula: the cooking is simple, the assembly is the point. Nothing here needs correcting, but a few of the assumptions are worth spelling out.
- Quantities are up to youNo amounts are given. For four, count on 2 lb potatoes, 4 tablespoons butter, about 1/2 cup hot milk, and 1 to 1 1/2 lb sausages (two to three links per person).
- Oven for browningThe original gives no temperature. A hot oven, around 425F for 10 to 15 minutes, or 2 to 3 minutes under the broiler, will brown the piped potato without drying it. The potato should already be hot when it goes in; this step is colour, not cooking.
- Stiff potato pipes, loose potato slumpsPiped roses hold their shape only if the puree is on the dry side, so add the milk sparingly. Rice the potatoes while hot and beat in the butter before the milk, and keep them warm until you pipe, since cooled mash clogs the bag.
- Pastry bag and tipA large star tip makes the rosettes described here. A plain round tip gives a smooth swirl that browns less dramatically.
- Pricking the sausagesCurrent practice is against it: piercing the casing lets out fat and juice and gives a drier sausage. Bursting comes from heat that is too high, so fry over medium heat, turning often, until browned and 160F at the centre. If you are following the original for its crisp, well-cooked skins, prick sparingly.
- Order of workFry the sausages while the potato is browning so both reach the platter hot. Drain the links on paper before laying them on the potato bank, or the fat will grey the piping.
- ServingOn the quantities suggested above, enough for four as a main dish. Applesauce, fried apple rings, or a plain mustard go well with it.
This is a set piece of early twentieth-century American home economics: an inexpensive meat, dressed up with piped potato so that it could be sent to the table as something respectable. Duchesse-style potato, riced, enriched with butter, and forced through a pastry bag, came into domestic cookbooks from professional and French practice, and by the 1900s and 1920s the pastry bag was recommended to ordinary housekeepers as a tool of everyday garnishing rather than confectionery. The opening line here, about transforming a homely platter into a sightly dish, states the era's governing assumption plainly: appearance was part of the cook's work, and a well-arranged plate was thought to justify a cheap main course.