The Links with a Past

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.

The Pomegranate is Here

The supermarket had pomegranates again yesterday! Their season is from now until January, so they haven’t been around for a few months. There’s something seductive about pomegranates. The myths and symbolism seem stronger than for other foods. I know about the temptation in the Garden of Eden, but I don’t think about it every time I see an apple. Somehow pomegranates keep their air of ancient mystery even when you can buy them in the supermarket.

I have childhood memories of picking out the grains with a pin (I’m not sure why, because these days they seem to come out perfectly easily without any pins being needed), and of the wonderful melograno bath oil from the Farmacia Santa Maria Novella in Florence, but there are more evocative images lingering in the air too, of the story of Persephone being kidnapped and taken to the Underworld by Pluto. The Fates decreed that she could not return if she had eaten any food, and she had eaten a few pomegranate seeds during her time in the Underworld, so a compromise was made allowing her to return to Earth for half of the year, and spend the other half in the Underworld (the proportions of time in each place vary in different versions of the story). During Persephone’s time in the Underworld, her mother, Ceres, goddess of agriculture, mourns, and the Earth is barren, apart from the pomegranate, the fruit of the Underworld.

It’s hard to resist the lure of such a fruit, but it’s not immediately obvious what to do with it when you get it home. A few seeds sprinkled on some Greek yoghurt are good, but there must be more than that!

One popular use is as a garnish for a warm salad of one of the richer meats, such as slow-roast lamb shoulder, or confit duck leg. Henry Harris makes a delicious version with a dressing of grated ginger, lemon, olive oil and poppy seeds, served with confit duck leg, with spring onions, walnuts, coriander, and a good scattering of pomegranate seeds. That combination of olive oil dressing, walnuts and pomegranates is very good.

Pomegranates originated in the Middle East, and are found in dishes all around that area. Paula Wolfert’s The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean has several examples: with summer savory salad; with grilled red pepper strips and cumin; in a hot and sweet red pepper dip with walnuts… and even more recipes that use pomegranate molasses. There’s a delicious one where chicken breasts are stuffed with mozzarella and roasted with a glaze of pomegranate molasses.

That should be enough to keep me going until they disappear in the new year.

Mushroom Catsup

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.