No. 1802

Sausages Gastronome

Saucisses au Gastronome

Garnish the inside edge of a pie-dish with a border of quenelle forcemeat (No. 92) laid on through a cornet; set on the bottom a layer of cooked fine herbs (No. 385), over this long sausages prepared with chopped truffles after pricking them, and cover the whole with an Italian sauce (No. 484) containing truffles; bestrew the surface with bread raspings and a pinch of grated parmesan, pour butter over and cook in the oven for fifteen to twenty minutes, until the sausages be well done and browned.

← No. 1801 Sausages Chipolata Pork No. 1803 Sausages in Bags →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade kitchen with numbered preparations on hand, so the work here is mostly assembly. The hinge is the sausages: twenty minutes of gratinating will not reliably cook raw pork links through, so poach or pan-cook them first and let the oven only finish and brown.

The cross-referencesNo. 92 is a quenelle forcemeat, No. 385 a fines herbes preparation, No. 484 an Italian sauce, which in the French repertoire of the period is a brown sauce worked with mushroom and shallot; for the exact compositions you have to turn to Ranhofer's own numbered entries. Any good mushroom-shallot duxelles and a well-reduced brown sauce will stand in for the last two.
CornetA paper piping cone. A small piping bag with a plain or star tube does the same job; the forcemeat border wants to be firm enough to hold its shape when the dish is filled.
Bread raspingsDried crusts grated or sieved fine — a coarse, sandy crumb rather than fresh breadcrumb. Panko is too soft; dry your own crumbs in a low oven and sieve them.
Pie-dishA shallow oval or round gratin dish, not a pastry case. Choose one that holds the sausages in a single layer with a little room at the edge for the piped border.
Oven heatRanhofer gives none. Gratinating in a hot oven, 400-425F, gives the browning he wants in fifteen to twenty minutes; below 375F the crumbs stay pale.
Sausages, and cooking them throughPork sausages that go into the dish raw should be poached or browned first. Pricking them, as directed, lets fat escape into the sauce; check the finished sausages reach 160F at the centre before serving.
TrufflesTwo uses — chopped into the sausage meat and again in the sauce. Fresh black truffle is a considerable expense for a gratin; preserved truffle peelings with a little of their juice in the sauce are the practical substitute, and truffle oil is not one.
YieldRanhofer gives no quantities. Reckoning roughly two long sausages a head, a dish holding eight to ten would serve four or five as a main course.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's record of thirty-odd years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and this entry shows how his book works: a French repertoire compressed into shorthand, each preparation pointing to a numbered base elsewhere in the volume. "Au gastronome" was one of a family of nineteenth-century garnish names — like financière or périgourdine — and in the period it standardly combined chestnuts and morels with truffle; its appearance on a dish of pork sausages is the point of the recipe: humble links raised to restaurant standing by truffle in the forcemeat, truffle in the sauce, and a parmesan gratin over the top. The chipolata and "in bags" recipes on either side of it belong to the same run through the pork chapter.