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Some of the recipes in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery, made Plain and Easy seem to come from another world. So much has changed in the 260 years since she was writing that the many of the recipes seem bizarre and most of us would have no idea how to combine them to produce a coherent meal. Some recipes use birds or fish that aren’t commonly eaten these days, or use bits of them that we’re not used to eating (there are three different ways to cook a cod’s head, for instance). Some have combinations of sweet and savoury that look strange these days: like sprinkling sugar over your potatoes.
It’s a surprise, in the midst of this alien world, to come across a recipe that is still in common use, pretty much unchanged.
To make Common Saufages.
Take three Pounds of nice Pork, Fat and Lean together, without Skin or Grifles; chop it as fine as poffible, feafon it with a Tea Spoonful of beaten Pepper, and two of Salt, fome Sage fhread fine, about three Tea Spoofuls; mix it well together, have the Guts very nicely cleaned, and fill them, or put them down in a Pot, so roll them of what Size you pleafe, and fry them. Beef makes very good Saufages.
For “fine sausages,” she recommends using only lean pork, and substituting beef suet for the fat (using equal quantities of pork and suet), and adding sweet herbs, nutmeg and lemon zest to the seasoning.
Of course, sausages are much older than the 18th century. They were certainly around in Roman times, though the fact that the latin name for sausages is the origin of the word “botulism” suggests it would have been wise to approach them with some caution.
It’s quite possible that even in Glasse’s day those who were less wealthy than her readers might have added some cereal to the mix. These days, some sausages, like Glasse’s, are made with just meat and seasonings, while others have substantial cereal additions. Walls sausages for instance contain about 65% meat, with water and rusk making up the bulk of the remainder.
I’ve experimented with various formulae, and finally decided that just a little bread improves the sausage texture and helps it to stay juicy when it’s cooked. I use pork shoulder, and try to get a moderately fatty piece. If there isn’t much fat, then I’ll add in some belly pork, or extra back fat (if you’re buying your meat from a butcher, he’ll probably have some he can spare). I also like a pretty traditional seasoning, but there’s plenty of scope for variation: rosemary and thyme; juniper; fennel…
For a couple of pounds of meat, I use:
1 1/2 oz breadcrumbs (about 5% of the weight of the meat)
1 Tbsp Maldon salt (the brand isn’t important, but the big flakes mean you don’t get so much in a tablespoon – if you’re using finely ground salt, use 2 tsp, or 1.5% of the weight of the meat)
Chopped sage – a handful
1/2 Tbsp ground mixed spice (about half black pepper, and the rest a mixture of nutmeg, mace, cinnamon, clove, allspice).
2 yards of hog casings (sheep casings give thinner, chipolata-size sausages)
Mince the meat. I prefer a coarse grind. Mix in the breadcrumbs and seasonings, then put the mixture through the mincer again. My mincer has an attachment for stuffing sausages. Basically, you remove the chopping plates, and add a funnel. Lubricate the outside of the funnel (butter or lard work pretty well). Thread the sausage casings onto the funnel, then feed the mixture through again, this time into the casing. Tie off the ends of the casing and twist the sausages to the length you want.
The sausages will be better if you can leave them for a day or two before cooking them. I put them on a plate in the fridge, covered with kitchen paper.
You could fry them and serve with mash and/or braised sauerkraut; braise them with beef stock, red wine and chestnuts; or combine them with another old English favourite, Yorkshire Pudding, to make Toad in the Hole.
I’m staying with the old English recipes this week. Today I started a batch of mushroom catsup, following Eliza Acton’s eloquent directions.
“One of the very best and most useful of store sauces is good home-made mushroom catsup, which, if really well prepared, imparts an agreeable flavour to any soup or sauce with which it is mingled, and at the same time heightens the colour without imparting the ‘bitter sweetness’ which the burnt sugar used as ‘browning’ in clumsy cookery so often does. The catsup ought, in fact, to be rather the pure essence of mushrooms, made with so much salt and spice only as are required to preserve it for a year or longer, than the compound of mushroom-juice, anchovies, shallots, allspice, and other condiments of which it is commonly composed, especially for sale.”
The word “catsup” isn’t much used in England these days, and the alternative version, “ketchup” is generally only used for the tomato flavoured condiment. Mushroom catsup is strongly flavoured and salty: more akin to soy sauce or Worcester sauce than to tomato ketchup. I looked it up in an online etymological dictionary:
ketchup
1711, from Malay kichap, from Chinese (Amoy dial.) koechiap “brine of fish.” Catsup (earlier catchup) is a failed attempt at Anglicization, still in use in U.S. Originally a fish sauce, early English recipes included among their ingredients mushrooms, walnuts, cucumbers, and oysters. Modern form of the sauce began to emerge when U.S. seamen added tomatoes.
I made some mushroom catsup a couple of years ago, and we’ve just used the last of it, so I picked up a couple of kilos of mushrooms from the farmers market this morning, and have just broken them into bits and salted them. Eliza Acton specifies 3/4 lb salt for 2 gallons of mushrooms. At that time, an English pint was 16 fl. oz, like the current American pint, not 20 fl. oz. like the British Imperial pint, so her 2 gallons is about 7 litres. My two kilos of mushrooms came a bit short of filling a 2 litre bucket, so I decided to stick with her quantities, and used 350g salt. The mushrooms will sit for three days, being stirred occasionally, then be simmered gently for fifteen to twenty minutes. The liquid is to be strained off without pressing , and boiled until it is reduced by half. Then, for every quart of liquid (about a litre) add ½oz (15g) black pepper, a drachm (5g) of mace (¼ tsp cayenne may be used instead of the black pepper). Store it in a cool place overnight, then pour it into bottles, leaving the sediment, and seal the bottles.
Apparently a second grade of catsup can be made by sqeezing the mushrooms, and mixing the squeezed juice with the sediment from the first batch. This second pressing should be more highly seasoned, using cloves, pepper, allspice and ginger.
I use the catsup for flavouring soups, stews and sauces – in the way you might use Worcester sauce, though it has a subtler flavour. It’s one of those things that sounds pretty recherché, but once you get used to having it around, you don’t like to do without it.
Update: 2 kg (4½ lb) of mushrooms produced about 1 litre (2 US pints) of liquid, which I boiled down to half a litre, so I added ¼ oz (7g) pepper and 3g mace. There was quite a lot of sediment, so I ended up with about 250 ml of catsup.
If you want to make a single 100 ml bottle of catsup, you’d need about 1 kg/2 lb mushrooms; 6 oz/170g salt; 2 tsp pepper and ½ tsp mace.
There’s a long history of meat pies in England. Back in the eighteenth century, the pastry case was thick and hard, and was just there to seal the meat in, not to be eaten. The pies would be boxed up to send to relatives in other parts of the country, or to send out to sea. In country houses, a more refined version gave a way to preserve highly perishable pork for a few weeks in the days before refrigeration.
The first pork pie I made was based on the recipe by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the River Cottage Meat book. One of the things I enjoy in cookery books is reading about the stories behind the food, so I always felt a bit cheated that rather than being a long-standing family favourite, he claimed this recipe came from his BBC research team. Since then I’ve found variations on the theme in Jane Grigson’s English Food, Eliza Acton’s Modern Cookery for Private Families, and Florence White’s Good Things in England. They’re all good – any of them will produce a pie that tastes much better than 99% of bought ones.
The basic idea is the same in all of them. The quantities here are enough to make a 20cm/8″ pie, using a loose-bottomed cake tin. If you don’t like pastry, or don’t want to make it, you can bake the same kind of filling in a loaf tin for a French-style terrine.
A day or two before you assemble the pie, make the jelly:
One or two pig’s trotter
A carrot, chopped into chunks
An onion, peeled and chopped into chunks
A bouquet garni
Everything in a pan and cover with about 3 l/6 US pints of cold water. Simmer gently for several hours, then strain off the liquid into a clean pan and boil down to about 500ml/1 US pint.
Make the pie a day before you want to eat it.
Hot Water Pastry:
200 ml water
100g lard
100g butter
550g plain flour
2 eggs
1/2 tsp salt
Put the lard and butter in a saucepan with the water, and warm it until the fat is melted. While it is warming, put the flour and salt in a bowl, roughly mix in the eggs, then add the warm water and melted fat. Stir it all together, by hand, or with a mixer, to form a smooth dough.
Preheat the oven to 180°C, 350°F.
While the dough cools, prepare the pie filling:
1 kg pork shoulder
250g pork belly
250g streaky bacon (the bacon cure keeps the filling pink rather than going grey when it cooks)
20 sage leaves, finely chopped
leaves from 3 sprigs thyme, chopped
½ tsp anchovy essence
½ tsp each mace, nutmeg, allspice, black pepper, white pepper
salt
An egg for glazing
Chop the lean parts of the pork shoulder into 6mm/¼” dice. Put any fatty bits, together with the pork belly, and the bacon, through the coarse blades of a mincer.
Mix the meat and seasonings together.
Cut off a quarter of the pastry to make the lid for the pie. Roll out the bigger piece to about 8mm/ 1/3″ thick. Line the cake tin with the pastry. Put the filling into the case. Roll out the lid and put it on top of the pie, crimping the edges to seal it. It doesn’t matter if the pastry is quite thick at the join. Make a small hole in the centre of the lid, so that you can pour the jelly in later.
Traditionally, English sweet pies were not decorated, but savoury ones could be quite ornate, so you can use any pastry trimmings to make leaves, flowers, acorns, or whatever suits your fancy.
Brush the top of the pie with beaten egg, and put it in the oven. After half an hour, turn the temperature down to 160°C/325°F and leave it for another 1¼ hours. Take the pie out of the oven, remove the case, brush the top and sides with egg, and return it to the oven for another quarter of an hour.
When the pie has cooled a little, warm the jelly just enough to make it liquid, and use a small funnel to pour it into the pie through the hole in the lid. Leave the pie overnight to cool completely before you cut it.
The one I made today had a mixture of chicken and pork. Leftover turkey could find a good home in this kind of pie too. All kinds of poultry and game have appeared in various versions over the years.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about the idea of eating local and seasonal food. It appeals to the romantic and the purist in me. But I live in England, and while I enjoy some root vegetables and wintery stews, I don’t want to eat quite that much cabbage, or deprive myself of the lemons, spices and various other imports that brighten the winter months. I’ve always had a suspicion that the whole idea was invented by someone living in a place like California or Southern Italy.
Still, following the seasons does give a new appreciation for each food as it appears after its seasonal absence. I love broad beans, but I’m convinced that a good part of their appeal is that they’re only around for a few weeks of early summer. I can buy strawberries all year round, but the English summer fruits taste quite different from the imported winter ones. On the whole, I get more pleasure from my food if I avoid the watery winter berries.
Part of the romantic appeal of seasonality is that it evokes images of being in tune with nature and the seasons. Most of us these days don’t grow much of our own food. In fact the farmers’ market is the closest I usually get to the land! So it was a special treat this week to have some truly fresh food grown by my nephew and his gardening partner. Their offering nicely captured both sides of the local and seasonal question. This is England, we haven’t had the greatest summer this year, so not all of their crops thrived. They brought us carrots, onions, and the last of this season’s runner beans. Nothing exotic or flashy, but carefully grown, and eaten within hours of being picked. Even beyond the increasingly rare delight of carrots that taste of carrot, there’s a particular atavistic pleasure from food that’s grown, harvested, cooked by and eaten with family and friends.
“It cannot be denied that an improved system of practical domestic cookery, and a better knowledge of its first principles, are still much needed in this country,” said Eliza Acton, writing in 1845. That (and the fact that her publisher turned down the book of poems she’d written, and said he’d prefer a cookery book) was what prompted Acton to write Modern Cookery for Private Families. The statement is probably just as true today as it was when she wrote it, but these days every book shop food section bulges with more cookery books than one person could ever use in a lifetime. The reluctant cook has a seemingly limitless supply of restaurants to choose from, and there are ready made meals to reheat for a night at home. So why is Eliza Acton’s book still in print?
The recipes are good. They’re thoroughly tested, clearly written, and they work. Not all modern books can say the same. But that’s probably not enough to earn a 160 year old book a place on your kitchen shelf. I think that what keeps the book alive is that when you read these recipes, you want to read them aloud. Eliza Acton may not have been a great poet, but she wrote prose that just begs to be spoken. Her recipes are as satisfying to read as they are to cook and to eat.
It’s easy to get the impression of a maiden aunt kind of figure: very organised, precise, and respectable. But Miss Acton does have a somewhat racy past. It seems that not only did she write poetry, but she spent much of her youth in France, where she was engaged to a young French officer. The engagement was broken off when she found out that he had been unfaithful, but there were rumours that she had a daughter by him, who was brought up by one of her sisters.
Here’s one of her steak pudding recipes. You can make this with packet suet from the supermarket, but it will be incomparably lighter and better tasting if you get some fresh suet. I’ve found that farmers’ markets or farm shops are the places you’re most likely to find it.
SMALL BEEF-STEAK PUDDING
Make into a very firm smooth paste, one pound of flour, six ounces of beef-suet finely minced, half a teaspoonful of salt, and half a pint of cold water. Line with this a basin which holds a pint and a half. Season a pound of tender steak, free from bone and skin, with half an ounce of salt and half a teaspoonful of pepper well mixed together; lay it in the crust, pour in a quarter of a pint of water, roll out the core, close the pudding carefully, tie a floured cloth over, and boil it for three hours and a half. We give this receipt in addition to the preceding one, as an exact guide for the proportions of meat puddings in general.
Flour, 1 lb.; suet, 6 oz.; salt, ½ teaspoonful; water ½ pint; rumpsteak, 1 lb.; salt, ½ oz.; pepper ½ teaspoonful; water, ¼ pint; 3½ hours.
The idea of summarising the recipe at the end was a novel one, introduced by Eliza Acton. A few years later, Isabella Beeton copied the idea, but moved the list to the start of the recipe, setting the format that’s in more or less universal use today.
Time for Food 