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Sausage with Peas
8 pork sausages 1 tablespoon flour 1/2 cup water 1/2 cup peas 4 eggs Cut the sausages in pieces about an inch long, and brown them in the frying-pan. When well browned, remove from the pan, pour off all the fat except one tablespoon, add to it the flour, and when browned, add the water. When the sauce is thick, put in the pieces of sausage, the peas, and beaten eggs. Pour into a baking-dish and bake in a slow oven until the eggs are set.
A thrifty pan-sauce dish that finishes as a savoury baked custard. The whole thing hinges on the oven being genuinely low, since the eggs will curdle and weep if pushed.
- Slow ovenA slow oven in this period is usually read as somewhere around 300F. At that heat the egg should set smoothly; expect it to take a fair while, and check rather than time it, since too hot an oven will curdle the custard and weep liquid.
- Judging donenessTake it out when the centre still trembles slightly and a knife slid into it comes out clean. Carryover heat finishes the set in the dish.
- The sausagesEight links of the sort meant here would come to somewhere around 3/4 lb to 1 lb of fresh pork sausage. Anything well seasoned works, but a coarse, plain breakfast-style sausage suits the mild custard better than a heavily herbed Italian one.
- Cool the sauce before the eggsThe recipe does not say whether the pan is off the heat when the beaten eggs go in. Let the roux-and-water sauce drop below scalding, or temper a little of it into the eggs first, or you risk scrambling them before the dish reaches the oven.
- The peasThe peas were most likely canned or leftover cooked peas, already tender. Frozen peas can go in straight from the bag; raw shelled peas should be blanched two or three minutes first, since the low oven will not cook them through.
- Sauce quantityHalf a cup of water with a tablespoon of flour makes a very small amount of thick gravy. It is meant to bind, not to sauce; the four eggs supply most of the liquid.
- Dish and yieldA shallow one-quart baking dish gives the best surface-to-depth ratio for even setting. Serves three as a light main course, or four with bread and a salad.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is specified, on the assumption the sausage carries it. Taste the sauce before the eggs go in and correct it then.