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Sausage Cakes
Skin fifteen country sausages, place in a bowl, add a half teaspoon freshly chopped chives and two saltspoons white pepper. Mix well together, then divide force in six equal parts, roll out on a lightly floured table into ball-like shapes, then flatten to quarter-inch thickness. Heat two tablespoons melted lard in frying pan, arrange cakes in it one beside another, fry for five minutes on each side, lift up, dress on hot dish and serve.
A plain dish of sausage meat reshaped into patties, with two words in it that no longer read the way they did. Nothing here is difficult; the only judgment call is heat and doneness.
- "Force" means the sausage meatFrom forcemeat (French farce), the seasoned ground filling. Once the casings are stripped off, the mixed meat is the force, divided in six.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons of white pepper is a half teaspoon in all — a lot for roughly a pound of meat. Modern bulk sausage is already assertively seasoned; taste a pinch of the raw mix cooked off in the pan before committing to the full amount.
- How much sausageFifteen small breakfast-size links skin out to about 1 to 1 1/4 lb. Bulk country sausage sold loose in a tube is the same product and saves the skinning entirely.
- LardTwo tablespoons is generous for sausage, which renders plenty of its own fat. A teaspoon of any neutral oil is enough to start a nonstick or well-seasoned pan; pour off the excess as it collects, or the cakes fry rather than brown.
- ShapingFlouring the board is the period habit; sausage meat is sticky and flour was the fix. Cold meat and damp hands work better and leave no raw-flour taste on the crust. Shaping the cakes and chilling them 15 minutes helps them hold at a quarter-inch.
- Five minutes a side is too longA quarter-inch patty over moderate heat is done in about 3 minutes a side. Ground pork needs an internal 160F, which arrives well before ten minutes of total cooking; past that the cakes tighten and go dry. Go by color and an instant-read thermometer, not the clock.
- ChivesAdd them raw at the mixing stage as written, but keep the cut coarse — finely minced chives scorch on the surface of the patty and turn bitter.
- YieldSix cakes, which is a breakfast or supper portion for three, or two with eggs alongside. "Dress on hot dish" simply means arrange on a warmed platter.
Sausage cakes are what happens when a cook has links and wants patties: the casing is a container, not an ingredient, and stripping it lets the meat be reseasoned and reshaped at will. "Country sausage" in an American book of this period meant fresh, coarsely ground, sage- and pepper-heavy pork sold loose or in short links by a butcher, as distinct from the smoked and cured sausages. The vocabulary here — force for the meat mixture, dress for arranging on the platter — is professional French kitchen shorthand carried straight into English. Frying in melted lard rather than the sausage's own fat reflects a kitchen where rendered lard was the default cooking medium.