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White Hog's Puddings (When the skins have been)
351. When the skins have been soaked and cleaned as before directed, rinse and soak them all night in rose-water, and put into them the following filling:-Mix half a pound of blanched almonds cut into seven or eight bits, with a pound of grated bread, two pounds of marrow or suet, a pound of currants, some beaten cinnamon, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, a quart of cream, the yolks of six and whites of two eggs, a little orange-flower water, a little fine Lisbon sugar, and some lemonlittle orange-flower water, a little fine Lisbon sugar, and some lemonpeel and citron sliced, and half fill the skins. To know whether properly flavoured, warm a little in a pannikin. In boiling, much care must be taken to prevent the puddings from bursting. Prick them with a small fork as they rise, and boil them in milk and water. Lay them in a table-cloth till cold.
Another White Hog's Pudding. -Two quarts of groats steeped in one and a half pint of water, then add five pints of milk. Boil the skin of the leaf, and any bits of fat or pork dripping with the groats; when thoroughly done, add twelve cloves pounded, a good handful of pennyroyal, two onions (previously boiled to make them less strong), seven or eight leeks, a little marjoram and nutmeg plant, with pepper and salt. When the skins are stuffed and tied, put them into boiling water, and boil for twenty minutes, lay them on straw to drain and cool. SAVELOYS. 352. 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.
Three sausage recipes sit together here: a sweet almond-and-marrow white pudding, a savoury oatmeal version, and saveloys. All rely on natural hog casings and gentle boiling rather than frying.
- Why the cautionThe second white pudding calls for "a good handful of pennyroyal" (Mentha pulegium). Its active compound, pulegone, is hepatotoxic and the plant is treated as unsafe for culinary use today, with particular risk in pregnancy. A handful of the fresh herb is well beyond a garnish quantity, and that variant should not be made. For an oatmeal hog's pudding, use a current recipe.
- The skins"Skins" are hog casings, sold salt-packed from butchers and online; they need rinsing and a long soak in cool water before use. The rose-water soak in the first recipe is a perfuming step, not a cleaning one, and is optional.
- Half fill, and prickThe hinge of the sweet pudding. Bread and cream swell enormously as they cook, and an overfilled casing will split. Fill loosely, and prick with a fine skewer as the puddings rise in the pan.
- Boil, do not simmer hardThe recipe gives no temperature, only "boil them in milk and water" plus a warning to take "much care" against bursting. Keep the pan at a bare shiver rather than a rolling boil, and watch that the milk does not catch if the heat is high.
- Grated bread and marrow"Grated bread" is fresh breadcrumbs from a stale loaf, not dried crumbs; dried crumbs will drink the cream and go pasty. Beef marrow can be ordered from a butcher in marrow bones; shredded beef suet is the usual stand-in.
- Lisbon sugarA soft, pale unrefined cane sugar. Light muscovado or light brown sugar is the closest thing now.
- GroatsWhole hulled oats — pinhead or steel-cut oats, not rolled. "The skin of the leaf" is the membrane surrounding leaf lard, the hard fat from around the pig's kidneys.
- Test the seasoningThe "pannikin" test is worth keeping: fry or poach a spoonful of the mixture before filling any casings. Spice quantities here are unstated and the raw mixture tastes of nothing much.
- YieldThe first filling runs to something like seven pounds of mixture and will fill a great many links; halving or quartering it is sensible for a home batch.
- SaveloysSalt pork here means home-salted or shop-bought cured pork, which supplies the salt; a fresh pork shoulder made up the same way will taste flat and pale. They are meant to be eaten cold, and the bread proportion of one part in four is high by modern sausage standards.
Hog's puddings belong to the killing day, when a pig was broken down in a single session and the perishable parts — blood, offal, fat, casings — had to be used at once. Black puddings took the blood; white puddings took cream, fat, oatmeal or bread instead, and in the wealthier version here they take almonds, currants, citron and four sweet spices, in the medieval manner that did not separate sweet from savoury. The oatmeal version is usually taken to be the older country form, and something close to it is still made in Devon and Cornwall as plain "hog's pudding". Saveloys, the third entry, take their name from the French cervelas, which is traced back to cervelle, brains, some early versions having contained them; by the nineteenth century they were an English cookshop staple, seasoned with sage. This recipe's version is put by and eaten cold.