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Sect. 3.-Saveloys
489. These are made of salt pork, of which the fat and lean are mixed together and chopped with a fourth part of bread, a little pepper and allspice, and a rather liberal use of sage leaves. They are put in skins as for pork sausages, and boiled slowly for half an hour, then put by and eaten cold.
A working sketch rather than a formula: the original gives proportions for the bread only, and leaves seasoning and quantities to the maker's judgement. The points below fill the gaps a modern cook needs.
- Salt pork means cured, not freshThis is pork that has been dry-salted or brined, so it arrives already seasoned and firm. Taste a small fried scrap before mixing; if it is aggressively salty, soak the meat in cold water for an hour or two and pat dry, or cut it with up to half fresh pork shoulder.
- The bread is a quarter by weightThe bread is a fourth part -- The original says only "a fourth part of bread" and does not state whether that is by weight or by bulk, or whether it is a quarter of the meat or of the whole. Read as a quarter of the meat by weight, 2 lb of meat would want roughly 8 oz of bread. Use stale white crumb soaked in a little water or stock and squeezed out, not dry crumbs, which will pull moisture from the sausage and leave it crumbly.
- Seasoning quantitiesNothing is specified. As a starting point for 2 lb of meat: 2 teaspoons rubbed sage, 1 teaspoon ground allspice, 1 to 2 teaspoons black pepper, and salt only after frying a test patty. Sage is the flavour that makes a saveloy read as a saveloy, so keep it forward.
- CasingsHog casings, the same as for pork sausages, roughly 32-35 mm. Buy them salted, rinse and soak in warm water for half an hour, and run water through them before filling. Fill without packing tight or they will split in the pot.
- Poach, do not boil"Boiled slowly" here means a bare shiver at around 175-180F. A rolling boil bursts the skins and renders the fat out into the water, leaving a dry sausage.
- Cook to temperature, not to the clockHalf an hour suits a sausage of ordinary thickness; thicker ones need longer. Take them to 160F at the centre on an instant-read thermometer before lifting them out.
- Cooling and keepingCool quickly, uncovered, then refrigerate rather than leaving them "put by" at room temperature. Eat within three days, or freeze once thoroughly cold.
- Yield2 lb of meat with 8 oz of bread makes about ten sausages of 4 oz each, enough for four to five as a cold plate with mustard and bread.
The saveloy takes its name, by the usual account, from the French cervelas and ultimately the Italian cervellata, a sausage that once genuinely contained brains; by the time it reached English shops the name had detached from the ingredient entirely and simply meant a short, highly seasoned, ready-cooked pork sausage sold cold. That is exactly what this entry describes, and it explains the last four words: a saveloy was not dinner but shop goods, boiled in a batch and eaten out of hand or with bread and mustard. The heavy hand with sage is characteristic of English pork sausage seasoning of the period.