Sausages, Beef
INGREDIENTS for 3 lbs. of sausages.-1 lb. of suet, 2 lbs. of lean beef, seasoning to taste, of salt, pepper and mixed spices. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Clear the suet from skin, and mince that and the beef as finely as possible; season with pepper, salt and spices, and mix the whole well together. Make it into flat cakes, and fry of a nice brown. Man persons pound the meat in a mortar after it is chopped; but this is not necessary when the meat is minced finely.
TIME.-10 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
These are skinless sausages — seasoned forcemeat shaped into cakes and fried — so no casings, stuffing horn or curing are involved. The original leaves the seasoning entirely to the cook, which is the one gap worth filling before you start.
- Seasoning, since none is givenBeeton's "to taste" is unhelpful when the mixture is raw. A working rate for sausage meat is 1½ to 2 teaspoons fine salt per pound of meat and fat, plus ½ teaspoon black pepper. Fry a teaspoon of the mix and taste it before shaping the rest.
- Mixed spicesBeeton does not say what the blend was, and Victorian "mixed spice" could denote either a sweet pudding mixture or a savoury seasoning. For sausage meat the savoury reading is the likelier one: mace, nutmeg, a little clove, sometimes ginger or coriander. Ground mace and nutmeg alone, about ¼ teaspoon of each per pound, is a reasonable interpretation of the period taste.
- SuetBeef suet is the hard fat from around the kidneys. Shredded packet suet is usually coated in flour and often vegetable-based; ask a butcher for fresh suet, or substitute an equal weight of hard beef fat trimmed from brisket or short rib.
- The fat ratioOne part fat to two parts lean is about 33 per cent fat — high by modern sausage standards but correct here, since suet renders less readily than pork fat. Keep everything cold through mincing so the fat stays in distinct pieces rather than smearing.
- MincingA coarse plate (about 8 mm) run twice gives better texture than one pass through a fine plate. A food processor works if you pulse in short bursts on well-chilled meat; run it continuously and you get paste. The mortar step Beeton mentions is genuinely unnecessary.
- Frying timeTen minutes is right for cakes about ½ inch thick over medium heat, turned once. Because this is minced beef, cook it through: 71C/160F at the centre. Beef suet needs real heat to render, so do not crowd the pan or the cakes will steam.
- YieldThree pounds of mixture makes roughly sixteen 3-oz cakes, or eight generous servings. The raw mixture keeps two days refrigerated and freezes well, shaped and interleaved with paper.
- Average costThe 2s. quoted is for the whole 3 lb batch in pre-decimal money — a comparative note for the period, not a figure that converts usefully today.
This recipe pairs lean beef with suet where a pork sausage would carry its own fat; without added fat, lean beef fries dry and crumbly. Skinless sausages of this sort sometimes sold as sausage meat, sometimes shaped and fried as cakes needed neither casings nor stuffing equipment. The word sausage comes through Old French from the Latin salsus, salted, a reminder that salt was the original point of the exercise, though a fresh mixture like this one is seasoned rather than cured and was meant to be eaten within a day or two. The instruction that many cooks pounded the meat in a mortar after chopping belongs to a period when mincing was done by hand with a knife; Beeton treats the step as dispensable once the meat is minced finely. The "Man persons" in the text is a printer's slip for "Many persons", and has been left as it stands.