No. 1804

Sausages with Cream Potatoes, Baked

Saucisses aux Pommes de Terre Hachees a la Creme Gratinees

Have some pork forcemeat the same as sausage forcemeat (No. 69); for each pound of this forcemeat mix in four ounces of cooked fine herbs (No. 385) and half a pint of bechamel (No. 409), also a little meat glaze (No. 402); thicken the whole with six egg-yolks; use this forcemeat to fill small sheep's casings previously salted, being careful not to have them too full, then twist the sausages into five inch lengths. Garnish the bottom of a deep baking dish with chopped potatoes and cream (No. 2780); lay the sausages on top after frying them for one minute in hot frying fat, pour oversome thick veloute sauce (No. 415) and bestrew with bread-crumbs and grated cheese; baste with melted butter and set the dish in a very hot oven to bake for fifteen to twenty minutes, or until browned to a fine color.

← No. 1803 Sausages in Bags Pork No. 1805 Sausages—Flat—with Tomato Soubise Sauce →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer writes for a brigade with a stocked larder, so this entry is mostly cross-references. Assembled in a home kitchen it is a rich sausage gratin: a soft, egg-bound forcemeat in sheep casings, baked over creamed potatoes under velouté and cheese.

The hinge: fill looselyThe forcemeat carries a cup of béchamel and six yolks per pound, so it swells as the egg sets. Ranhofer's warning not to fill the casings too full is the whole trick — a tight link will split in the pan or the oven and bleed its filling into the sauce.
The numbered referencesNo. 69 is plain pork sausage forcemeat; No. 385 is cooked fines herbes, essentially a dry duxelles of mushrooms, shallot and parsley; No. 409 is béchamel; No. 402 is glace de viande, reduced brown stock; No. 415 is velouté; No. 2780 is potatoes chopped and bound with cream. Any competent modern version of each will serve.
Half a pintAn American half-pint here is one cup (8 fl oz) of béchamel per pound of forcemeat. The four ounces of cooked fine herbs is a weight, not a volume — about half a cup of well-drained duxelles.
Sheep casingsSold salt-packed; rinse them and soak in cool water for at least half an hour, flushing water through the length, before stuffing. Sheep casings are the narrow ones, roughly 22–24 mm, which is why the finished links are slim enough to bake in twenty minutes.
A very hot ovenTake that as 450°F. The sausages go in raw apart from a one-minute contact with hot fat, which only colours and firms the skins; the oven does the cooking, and the browned crumb-and-cheese crust wants the high heat.
DonenessFresh pork sausage should reach 160°F at the centre. In thin sheep casings under hot velouté that happens well inside the stated fifteen to twenty minutes, but check a link rather than judging by the colour of the gratin.
Meat glazeGlace de viande is stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. A teaspoon or two per pound of forcemeat is enough; commercial demi-glace concentrate substitutes acceptably, but reduce the salt elsewhere.
YieldA pound of forcemeat plus its enrichments comes to close to two pounds of mixture, which will fill a good many slim five-inch links; enough to serve four to six as a main course over the potatoes.

A Little History

This is No. 1804 in Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he wrote after decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The recipe shows what separated a restaurant kitchen from a domestic one: an ordinary sausage forcemeat is lifted with b"chamel, meat glaze, cooked herbs and egg yolks, then set over creamed potatoes and finished gratin\crumbs and cheese, the term taken from the crust rather than from any particular dish. Ranhofer's numbering system assumes the reader has stock, velout\and glace already standing in the larder, which is precisely how a nineteenth-century brigade worked; the recipe is less a set of instructions than an assembly order. Pork sausage in sheep casings was hardly grand food on its own, and pages like this one show a restaurant kitchen giving humble charcuterie the same sauce work it gave to game and turbot.