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Sausage Croquettes (One pound sausage meat two)
One pound sausage meat, two eggs, well beaten, and bread crumbs well minced. Make the meat into cakes, then roll in the beaten egg, and afterwards in bread crumbs. Fry in pan and serve hot. Cold ham served in the same way is delicious; mince it very fine.--Mrs. G.
A two-line recipe that assumes you know what sausage meat is and how to breadcrumb. The only real decisions are crumb size, fat depth and when to call it done.
- Sausage meatThis means fresh bulk pork sausage, not cased links and not cured. Virginia sausage meat of the period was commonly seasoned with salt, pepper and sage, though mixtures varied. If you can only find links, slit the casings and squeeze the filling out.
- "Bread crumbs well minced"Fine dry crumbs, not the coarse fresh kind. Stale bread grated or rolled with a bottle was the period method; fine dry breadcrumbs from a jar behave the same way and brown more evenly than panko here.
- Two eggs is generousOne beaten egg will coat a pound of sausage in eight cakes. The second is insurance against a thin, patchy coating — beat both, and use what you need.
- Shape and thicknessKeep the cakes about half an inch thick and no wider than three inches. Thicker patties brown outside before the centre is done, and this coating will not survive a long stay in the pan.
- FryingA quarter inch of fat or oil in a heavy skillet over medium heat, roughly 340-350F. Too hot and the crumbs scorch while the pork is raw; too cool and the coating soaks and slides off.
- DonenessGround pork needs an internal temperature of 160F. Figure four to five minutes a side for half-inch cakes, and check the thickest one rather than trusting colour, since the seasoned meat stays pinkish.
- The cold ham versionMinced cooked ham has little left in it to bind when cold and is liable to crumble as it fries. Bind it with a stiff white sauce or a little beaten egg and crumb before shaping, chill the cakes firm, then coat and fry only until browned — the ham is already cooked.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield. A pound will make roughly eight small cakes, enough for three or four people.
Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1879) was assembled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housekeepers, credited variously by full name, surname or initials — which is why this one carries only "Mrs. G.", a real cook's shorthand, printed as received. The recipe is a thrift device as much as a dish: sausage meat was a byproduct of the winter hog-killing that anchored the Virginia household year, and the egg-and-crumb coating was often used to dress up anything already cooked or already ground. Calling the result a croquette rather than a sausage cake reflects the period's fondness for French kitchen vocabulary; a true croquette is bound with a thick sauce and deep-fried, while this is a breaded patty in a skillet. The appended note about cold ham is the more revealing half of the entry, since it shows the coating being used exactly as intended — to make yesterday's ham presentable at today's breakfast table.