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Baked Sausages with Apples
Peel, cut in halves and core six medium, sound apples; cut into very fine slices and place in a lightly buttered earthen pan. Lightly prick with a fork twelve fresh, fat, stringless sausages and lay them over the apples. Season with half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons white pepper, divide half ounce butter in small bits over the sausages, pour two tablespoons white wine over and bake in the oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove and send to the table in the same dish.
A one-dish supper that needs almost nothing from a modern cook except a stated oven temperature, which the original omits. Everything hinges on the apples being sliced thin enough to collapse into a sauce in the time the sausages take to cook through.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given. Bake at 375F: hot enough to brown the sausages in thirty-five minutes, gentle enough that the apples soften rather than scorch at the edges of the dish.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is half a teaspoon. Combined with the half teaspoon of salt, that is modest seasoning for twelve sausages; taste and adjust once cooked.
- The earthen panA shallow glazed earthenware or stoneware gratin dish, since the food goes to the table in it. Use something wide enough to hold the sausages in a single layer with space between them, or they steam instead of browning.
- "Stringless" sausagesThe sense is not certain; it most likely means free of gristle and tough sinew, well-filled and evenly ground, though it may simply distinguish sausages not sold linked in strings. Any good fresh pork sausage works; skinless or coarse-cut butcher's links both suit the dish.
- Slice the apples very fineThis is the instruction that matters. Thick slices will still be raw wedges when the sausages are done, while slices of about an eighth of an inch break down into a soft, faintly tart bed. A firm cooking apple that holds some shape is better than a mealy dessert variety.
- Pricking the sausagesThe recipe calls for it, and it is useful here because the rendering fat is meant to season the apples. It does cost some juiciness, so prick two or three times only.
- DonenessThirty-five minutes at 375F will usually do it, but check the thickest sausage reads 160F at the centre. Turn them once at the halfway mark so both sides colour.
- YieldTwelve sausages and six apples serve four to six as a main course, with bread or boiled potatoes and a sharp green salad.
Pork and apples belong together for the plain reason that they came out of the same farmyard year: pigs were slaughtered in autumn, when apples were being picked and pressed, and the fruit's acidity cuts the richness of fresh sausage meat. Baked-sausage-and-apple dishes of this kind are common across northern Europe, from German and Alsatian kitchens through to English cookery, and one might guess that a book called The International Cook Book would be exactly the sort of place such a dish would be filed under a general heading rather than claimed for any one country, though that is only speculation. The splash of white wine and the finish in the same earthenware dish it was baked in belong to an era when a shallow glazed pan was expected to travel from oven to table without apology.