Sausage Puddings.

Sadly, I am still no closer to solving the mystery of ‘snags’ as a word for sausages, but as compensation I have turned up some interesting recipes for their use. These recipes are for those amongst you who love sausages in any shape or form, particularly if you live in the northern hemisphere and winter is on the horizon, and especially if you love the words ‘sausage’ and ‘pudding’ side-by-side - but if, and only if, you are absolutely fearless in the face of suet.

In the grand tradition of hearty English savoury puddings, I give you the following recipes, which do not - but should - come with cholesterol warnings.

Sausage Pudding.
[A cheap diner for a hard-working man]
A sausage pudding will be much appreciated by a hungry man, and can be made during the afternoon of the previous day, when the housework is done. Quickly brown in the frying pan three or four sausages. (They brown better if lightly rolled in flour first.) Place them where they will cool rapidly, and in the meantime make a good solid paste, line a well-greased pudding basin, lay in the sausages with a dash of pepper, salt, and a little dry mustard; add a little water, cover with crust, tie up in a cloth, and boil for an hour and a half or two hours.
Aberdeen Weekly Journal (Aberdeen, Scotland) March 4, 1891.

You will find a suet paste recipe here. 

Sausage Pudding.
Procure 2 lb. of Cambridge sausages, and twist into round balls; put these into boiling water on the stove, merely to parboil them for a minute or so; then throw them into cold water and remove the skins.
Line the basin with suet paste, fill it with sausages and pour the following preparation upon them: - Take1 chopped onion, and 3 sage leaves which have been boiled in water for 2 minutes; drain them upon a sieve and then fry them in a small stewpan until they are light-brown colour. Add a teaspoonful of curry paste, season with pepper and salt, and moisten with ½ pint of good broth; stir the sauce upon the fire and when it has boiled ¼ hour rub it through a sieve and pour it upon the sausages.
Cover the pudding with paste, steam it for 2 hours, and when turned out of the basin send to table with plain gravy under it.
The Australian Home Cookery (1917),

If, however, for reasons of your own, you eschew suet crust, the following recipe may be adequate, although it hardly justifies the name ‘pudding.’

Sausage Pudding.
Half a pound of pork sausages, two pounds of potatoes, an onion. Parboil the sausages, remove the skins, slice the potatoes, previously boiled, in thick pieces, chop an onion. Put alternate layers of potatoes, sausage meat, and onion in a greased pie-dish until it is full; the sausage must be spread very thinly, but as it is rich and pungent, the flavour will permeate the whole. A few browned breadcrumbs may be sprinkled on top. Bake for half an hour. Variety may be given by using rice instead of potatoes.
Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales) June 10, 1899.

Quotation for the Day.

Cambridge gave the world science and sausage.
Unknown.

Snags and Bangers.

I had a mind today to find out why sausages are called ‘bangers’ (in England) and ‘snags’ (in Australia). The story of ‘bangers’ turns out not to be terribly interesting, so someone needs to invent a good myth pretty soon. It is assumed that ‘banger’ relates to the noise made by a bursting sausage, and the nick-name dates to the first or second decade of the twentieth century.

As for the word ‘snag’, the first reference to it use for ‘sausage’ given by the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1941, which seems very recent to me. There appear to be no theories for this usage of the word, so I have been forced to invent some myself this very day.

The word ‘snag’ can also mean:

- ‘a short protuberance or knob’, usually one left after pruning (perhaps indicating the shape of a sausage?),
- an underwater tree branch or similar, which acts as a hazard to fishermen and sailors (perhaps suggesting the rather risky, hidden contents of the sausage)
- an obstacle or impediment (to good nutrition?)
- the common snail, in the old Sussex dialect, a slug in the West Kent dialect, and a snake in other dialects. I strongly suspect this has no connection to sausages, but place it here to excite your suggestions.
- ‘A Sensitive New Age Guy’. Perhaps SNAGS eschew snags?
- and, apparently, according to one not-very-reliable-looking source, it can also be a dialect word for 'a morsel, a light meal' (the source does not specify which dialect). Which might possibly be relevant, if you believe that sausages constitute a ‘light’ meal.

The lack of conclusions did not prevent me from rediscovering ‘the sausage roll’, which has certainly not featured in this blog before. Sausage rolls are almost as important to the nutrition status of the Average Australian as are meat pies, so they are deserving of some comment.

The sausage roll seems to have come onto the world scene around about the time of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations in London’s Crystal Palace (in 1851). I am sure that sausage rolls existed before that date - although I have found very little to support that opinion - but it is certain that a total of 28, 046 were consumed by visitors to the exhibition during the five and a half months of its life. If I had ninety-nine lives I could possibly remove a number of things from my ‘to research more fully list’, but my definitive history of the sausage roll ends right here. Over to one of you to complete it, if you will.

The recipe for today is, of course, for sausage rolls, and it comes from one of my favourite Victorian era cookbooks - Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery, published in the 1870’s.


Sausage Rolls.
Take half a sausage cut lengthwise for each roll. Enclose the half in pastry six inches square and an eighth of an inch thick. Pinch the edges securely, and then bake the roll on a baking sheet in a well-heated oven. They may be served hot or cold. Or take equal weights of cold dressed chicken and tongue, or cold roast veal and ham. Mince the meat finely, and season well with salt, cayenne, and powdered sweet herbs. The latter may be omitted if liked. Press the mince together, and enclose it in puff paste, or good pastry that is large enough to contain it. Bake in a well-heated oven. These rolls are especially adapted for pic-nic parties. Time to bake, half an hour for fresh meat, fifteen minutes for cooked meat.

Quotation for the Day.

A highbrow is the kind of person who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.
Sir A.P. Herbert

Prescription Sausages.

Yesterday’s source - Pharmaceutical Formulas - A Book of Useful Recipes for the Drug Trade, published in 1898 – provides much other food for thought. The ‘Drug Trade’ includes all manner of fascinating formulas for household use, including cleaning materials, writing materials, perfumes, preparations for the hair and teeth and so on, as well as those with medicinal applications.

Quite a number of the recipes in the chapter on Household and Domestic Requisites (in which we found yesterday’s sauces), are decidedly difficult to reconcile with the health implications implicit in a publication for pharmaceutical professionals, but neither do they seem to fall on the industrial chemical side of things. Yesterday I said ‘I live in hope of the day when the friendly neighbourhood pharmacist will provide recipes for the daily dinner’. Even if this were to happen in the amazingly mysterious future, I cannot image that the meal prescription will ever, ever, ever, include sausages (although it should, with reservations, of course). In our source manual for the day however, we find the following recipe (without comments as to meat quality or type, it must be said) ….


Pork Sausage Flavouring.
White Pepper 2 oz.
Jamaica Pepper 6 dr.
Black Pepper 3 dr.
Ginger 3 dr.
Capsicum 2 dr.
Mace 1 dr.
Cloves 10gr.
All in fine powder, mixed. A little nitre helps to keep the colour of the meat.
(an alternative recipe suggests “tinting the powder a dark salmon colour by means of finely powdered red sanderswood.)

The pharmaceutical focus is evident in the use of pharmaceutical units of measurement in this recipe. The abbreviations and conversions are:

gr = grain (not gram!); one gram is about 60 grains
dr = dram, or drachm; one dram is approximately 3.89 gm.

Here is another lovely idea from the book.

Lemon Pickle.
Slit unpeeled lemons, previously cured, into quarters, without separating the pieces, sprinkle with salt, and lay aside in dishes for a week. Then pack in jars with two or three cayenne pods to each lemon and a good sprinkling of turmeric, and cover with hot vinegar.
[the instruction “previously cured” is odd here. It presumably means salted, but then the recipe goes on to describe the salting process. Perhaps an example of the inexact art of recipe writing?]

Quotation for the Day.

We are living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons.
Alfred E. Newman

When is a Chipolata Not a Chipolata?

A ‘chipolata’ here in Australia is, unequivocally, a sausage. Until recently I understood that this was pretty much what it was everywhere else in the civilised world. Not so. Some time ago I came across a mention of a Bavarois Chipolata in a Netherlandish wedding menu of the 1930’s and was briefly, but deeply, horrified. A sweet cream dessert with sausage?

A brief request to the Oracle at Google confirmed that there is a dessert-type Pudding à la Chipolata. Curiously enough it does seem to be associated with the Dutch – at least in its modern incarnation. The story is far from clear however, with one source (1877) insisting it is un gâteau anglais-italien and another that it was invented (and the recipe kept a secret), by the famously tragic French chef François Vatel (1631-1671). Most versions have it as a set or iced pudding, but there is also a version called Plum Pudding à la Chipolata.


So, my question is, what has chipolata – either the sausage or the word – got to do with a sweet dessert? The word apparently comes from the Italian cipolla for onion, and the the classic garnish à la Chipolata does contain onions, as well as chestnuts and small sausages. The sausages used in the chipolata in turn became called chipolata sausages or simply chipolatas. At least, that is my working theory on how the chipolata sausage got its name. None of which explains the pudding variety however (although chestnuts are a common ingredient in nineteenth century iced puddings, so perhaps there is a connection there.)

Frustratingly, after an intense and harrowing full twenty minutes of research, I have been unable to come up with a convincing ‘historic’ recipe for this pudding. I hope that perhaps one of you might be able to fill in this gap. Instead I give you this rather tasty-sounding ‘foreign ragout’ which might make a nice one-pot winter dinner.

Chipolata.
A foreign ragout. Blanch two dozen of carrots, two dozen of turnips, the same quantity of large chesnuts and onions; let these stew for some time over the fire with some consommé and a little sugar. Having fried separately a dozen sausages and a dozen slices of bacon, add them with two dozen champignons and a few spoonfuls of espagnole sauce to the vegetables, adding from time to time a little consommé or gravy. These are to stew for an hour.
The domestic dictionary and housekeeper's manual, by G. Merle, 1842

Quotation for the Day.

A high-brow is someone who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.
A.P.Herbert

The Poison Squad.

It is a double anniversary of foodie significance today. On June 30, 1906, the first Federal Food and Drug Act was signed into law in the United States. In 1930, on the same date, the chief architect of the legislation and the first commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration – Harvey Washington Wiley – died at the age of 85 years.

Wiley was a chemist who became deeply concerned about the amount of chemical preservatives being increasingly added to food, and the potential damage these might cause. In a project that would not even be mooted in a mood of malicious office humour today, he tested a variety of these chemicals on volunteers from within the Bureau of Chemistry. The experiments began in 1902, and the daring employees became known as “The Poison Squad”.

Initially the preservative being tested was added to the food, but the unpleasant taste led the volunteers to avoid that particular dish, so the chemicals were then given in capsule form. The most discussed experiment was with borax. Wiley described the system:

“With the ordinary quantities of butter and meat preserved with borax there would be consumed about 7 ½ grains of borax per day [in two doses] by each individual; and so we fed that for sixty days in succession, beginning with the preliminary period of ten days, then following sixty days in which we gave the borax”

Many of the men became symptomatic and unwell (although apparently not seriously so) and the results were accepted as proving that many preservatives were harmful. No deaths were attributed to the “poisons”, and one of the volunteers lived into his 90’s.

The experiment gave unequivocal support to the rising move against adulteration and contamination and other unsavoury practices in the food industry. Another timely exposé was the publication of The Jungle - the very provocative book about conditions (for workers as well as animals) in the meat industry - by Upton Sinclair in 1906 (and which featured in a previous blog post here.)


The law said, essentially, that food was unfit or unsafe for consumption if:

“ ...it is mixed or packed with another substance so as to reduce or lower or injuriously affect its quality and strength if any substance has been substituted wholly or in part; if any valuable constituent has been wholly or in part abstracted, if it has been colored, powdered, coated, or stained to conceal damage or inferiority; if poisonous or deleterious substances have been added; if it consists wholly or in part of filthy, putrid, or decomposed animal or vegetable substance, or any portion of an animal unfit for food; or if the product is from a diseased animal or one that died otherwise than by slaughter.”

Our recipe for the day is for sausage – sausage meat, not sausage links – because, lets face it, despite the laws, purchased commercial sausages can be a bit dodgy!

Sausage.
Allow three pouns of fresh, lean pork and two of fat; must be free from gristle, sinews, and skin; have them put twice through the sausage-grinder; then add two and one half ounces of salt, half an ounce of pepper, 12 cloves, ground, and a dozen blades of mace, powdered, three grated nutmegs, six tablespoons sage, two teaspoonfuls powdered rosemary; mix all together; pack tightly in a stone jar, and cover with oiled paper; keep in a dry, cool place.
New York Times, April 29, 1877.

Quotation for the Day.

Song of the Pizen [Poison] Squad.

(Respectfully Dedicated to the Department of Agriculture)

By S. W. Gillilan.

O we're the merriest herd of hulks

that ever the world has seen;

We don't shy off from your rough

on rats or even from Paris green:

We're on the hunt for a toxic dope

That's certain to kill, sans fail.

But 'tis a tricky, elusive thing and

knows we are on its trail;

For all the things that could kill

we've downed in many a gruesome wad,

And still we're gaining a pound a day,

for we are the Pizen Squad.

On Prussic acid we break our fast;

we lunch on a morphine stew;

We dine with a matchhead consomme,

drink carbolic acid brew;

Corrosive sublimate tones us up

like laudanum ketchup rare,

While tyro-toxicon condiments

are wholesome as mountain air.

Thus all the "deadlies" we double-dare

to put us beneath the sod;

We're death-immunes and we're proud as proud--

Hooray for the Pizen Squad!

A Frank Plank.

We’ve had quite a range this week, havent we? From the challenging (insects) to the cruel (crimped fish) to the solo-soy dinner. Today we go plain and family friendly. Today we have frankfurters – ‘franks’ or to their friends, ‘liberty sausage’ to the patriotic American of WW I, and the key ingredient to a hot-dog.

To the OED, a frankfurter is ‘a highly seasoned smoked beef and pork sausage, originally made at Frankfurt am Main’, and gives the first reference from 1887. Well, not to argue with the OED, smoked sausages have been around in an infinite variety of forms in many places, for many centuries. The really intriguing question is, how did they get associated with that city? I havent so far found a convincing answer, but maybe you have?

A random selection of other dictionaries describe the frankfurter as:

- a thin-skinned sausage, originally from Germany, made of finely minced smoked pork or beef and grilled, fried, or boiled
- a thin red-brown sausage which is preserved using smoke or chemicals and often eaten with bread
- a cooked smoked sausage of beef or beef with pork, turkey, etc., made in cylindrical links a few inches long, now usually without a casing; wiener.
- a smoked sausage of beef or beef and pork made in long reddish links.
- a cured cooked sausage (as of beef or beef and pork) that may be skinless or stuffed in a casing
- a smooth-textured sausage of minced beef or pork usually smoked; often served on a bread roll

Not coming from either of the countries of their birth, nor their main country of adoption, there is another question that has me not-quite lying awake in anguish, but a bit puzzled from time to time, is – is there a difference between a ‘wiener’ (supposedly from Vienna) and a frankfurter (from Frankfurt)?

There is more to frankfurters than hot-dogs. Here is how to dolly them up to make a slightly posh family dinner, courtesy of the Morning Avalanche (Lubbock, Texas) of Nov 5, 1943.

FRANKS FAMILY-STYLE.
For a quick meal that "looks big", serve a frank plank. On a plank or oven-proof platter broil hot, mashed potatoes with franks and bacon atop so the meat juices run tastily down on the potatoes.
To prepare: peel 6 medium sized potatoes, cook and mash with 3 tablespoons fat, 1/3 to ½ cup hot milk, and salt and pepper. Pile on an oven-proof platter or plank. Arrange 1 pound frankfurts on potatoes, and 4 strips bacon atop franks. Broil until bacon is crisp, and franks and potatoes are thoroughly heated. Serves 4 to 6.

Quotation for the Day …

A hot dog at the ball park is better than steak at the Ritz.
Humphrey Bogart.

Black Pudding 2.

July 21 ...

Some of you (including The Old Foodie Spouse) were mildly shocked and disappointed that the Black Pudding story a few weeks ago was about a sweet fruity dessert dish, not a savoury sausagey breakfast dish. The second sort is of course the older – black because it is made from blood (and is sometimes called Blood Pudding). Usually pigs’ blood. A dish for the peasants when they got lucky at pig-killing time when most of the flesh was salted down or made into ‘keeping’ sausages and hams. Fat is not stinted in its making, and it often also contains starchy cereal such as oats or flour. This ‘savoury and piquant delicacy is a standing dish among the common people in the North [of England]’ where it used to be sold by street vendors, and in the parts of Europe where the pig is king of the kitchen garden.

Here is a very elegant version with no starch at all, from William Salmon’s wonderful book published in 1695 The Family Dictionary ; or, Household Companion.

Black-Pudding; to make this the best, and fare exceeding the common way. Boil th Umbles of a Hog tender, take some of the Lights [lungs] with the Heart, and all the Flesh about them, taking out the Sinews, and mincing the rest very small; do the like by the Liver: add grated Nutmet, four or five Yolks of Eggs, a pint of Sweet Cream, a quarter of a pint of Canary [wine], Sugar, Cloves, Mace and Cinnamon finely powdered, a few Carraway-seeds, and a little Rose-water, a pretty quantity of Hog-fat, and some Salt: roul it up about two Hours before you put it into the Guts, then put it into them after you have rinsed them in Rose-water.

I love the ‘pretty quantity’ of hog-fat!

The alphabetical format of Salmon's book is very strict so that the topic that immediately precedes ‘Black-Pudding’ is ‘Biting by a Snake, Adder, or Mad Dog.’ No-one writes or publishes books like Salmon’s any more. It was the only household reference a housewife would need. I will give you the much abbreviated title page, so that you can begin to appreciate its contents.

The Family Dictionary ; or, Household Companion . Wherin are Alphabetically laid down Exact Rules and Choice Physical RECEIPTS FOR The Preservation of Health, Prevention of Sickness, and Curing the several Diseases, Distempers, and Grievances incident to Men, Women, and Children. Also, directions for Making Oils, Ointments, Salves …. Likewise, Directions for Cookery …. Also, the Way of Making all sorts of Perfumes, Beautifying Waters, …..Together with the Art of making all sorts of English Wines ….. The MYSTERY of Pickling …. ’

By a lovely and surprising co-incidence, today’s black pudding story fits with the ‘matrimonial food’ story of last week. Today I give you two ‘Quotations for the Day’ to illustrate.

One of the Apothogems of Francis Bacon.
‘Marriage … was like a black pudding; the one brought blood, the other brought suet and oatmeal’

A Scottish metaphor about marriagable women ‘Blood without groats (husked oats) is naught without blood’. ‘By a homely illusion to the composition of a black pudding, it intimates that a woman, though of good family, is not eligible without a good fortune.’

Getting a Grip on Sausages.

January 25

Virginia Woolf the English writer was born on this day in 1882. She was born into a family that had wealth, social standing, and a rich intellectual and literary life. She became famous as a novelist, slightly infamous as a member of the ‘Bloomsbury Group, and ultimately she became a tragic story herself.

In addition to her published, public, writing, Woolf kept a journal. Early in World War II, on March 8, 1941 she wrote:

“And now with some pleasure I find that it’s seven; and must cook dinner. Haddock and sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.”

Less than three weeks later, on March 28, fearful of the return of the mental illness which had plagued her all her life, she loaded up her pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river Ouse near her Sussex home.

There are many references to food in Virginia Woolf’s diaries, and it is clear that it was one of the pleasures in her life. Even though she noted the pleasant anticipation of cooking her wartime dinner, perhaps her diary entry also tells of her awareness of her fragile hold on day to day things. Or perhaps it was a writer’s awareness that writing about it is a way of getting a grip on any subject at all.

I give you a wartime sausage-meat recipe, from Ministry of Food Facts Leaflets produced in 1941.

Meat Roll.
(Mrs. L. Harbourne)
First of all, soak a large slice of bread in milk. Now mix together ¼ lb minced veal, ¼ lb. minced beef, ¼ lb. sausage meat and a few minced bacon pieces. Add to them a small onion or one or two spring onions (if you can get them) sliced finely, a grated raw potato and salt and pepper to taste. Squeeze the milk out of the slice of bread and mash the bread into the meat mixture. If you can spare it, bind the mixture with a small beaten egg; otherwise use the milk in which the bread was soaked. If necessary, add enough white breadcrumbs to make the mixture firm enough to shape into a roll. Sprinkle thickly with brown breadcrumbs or medium oatmeal that has been toasted in an oven, put into a greased baking tin, cover with butter or margarine paper, and bake in good oven for an hour.
This roll can be served hot or cold. It looks most attractive when decorated with strips of anchovy or some sliced, cooked carrot sprinkled with a little chopped parsley.

Monday’s Story …

On Coconuts.

Quotation for the Day …

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. Virginia Woolf, ‘A room of one’s own.’

Meat From The Jungle.

Today, September 20^th

The Pulitzer-prize winning author Upton Sinclair was born on this day in 1878. Twenty-eight years later to the day his book The Jungle was published – and what a stir it caused! Sinclair was a passionate socialist and intended his book to expose the awful working conditions of ordinary wage-earners - the victims of expoitation by greedy capitalist bosses in the meat-packing industry. His novel also described the appalling public health problems posed by the slaughterhouses - and as it turned out, this was the issue picked up by the reading public, who were outraged and vocal. A couple of sentences will suffice as examples of the situation described by Sinclair:

“ … the first cattle of the morning were just making their appearance; and so, with scarcely time to look about him, and none to speak to any one, he fell to work. It was a sweltering day in July, and the place ran with steaming hot blood - one waded in it on the floor. The stench was almost overpowering …. ”

“ … In summer the stench of the warm lard would be nauseating …”

Animal activists got plenty of ammunition too from the book too:

“The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing - for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy - and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold - that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors - the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes.”

There is no doubt that the public uproar over the public health issues exposed in The Jungle that contributed significantly to the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. It is good to know that novelists can influence politics.

The book also did no harm to the vegetarian cause either – and after all that blood and squealing, the only suitable recipe for today is something gentle and vegetarian, don’t you think? From Mrs. Mills’ Reform Cookery (1909), here is an “instead of sausages” recipe, and it fits nicely into the Variations on a Theme of Yorkshire Pudding suggested by a recent post.

Toad-in-a-Hole.
Make the sausages the same as in previous recipe*, only using brown lentils instead of German lentils. Put in a buttered pie-dish and pour over the following

Batter.
Beat up one or two eggs. Add 3 tablespoonfuls flour, and by degrees two gills milk, also seasoning of grated onion, chopped parsley, white pepper, "Extract," &c.

*Sausages.
are made of the same ingredients as savoury brick**. Pound well in a basin, so as to have all the materials nicely blended, or put in a saucepan over gentle heat, and mash well with a wooden spoon. See that the seasoning is right. Some chopped tomatoes and mushrooms are an improvement, also some grated onion, ketchup, and "Extract." These should be put in saucepan with a little butter until lightly cooked, then the lentils, &c., should be added, the whole well mixed and turned out to cool. When quite cold, flour the hands and form into small sausages. Brush over with beaten egg and fry, or put on greased baking tin and bake till a crisp brown. They may need a little basting, or to be turned over to brown equally.

**Savoury Brick
Take about 2 teacupfuls cooked German lentils - not too moist. Put in a basin and add a cupful fine bread crumbs, and a cupful cold boiled rice or about half as much mashed potatoes. Add any extra seasoning--a little ketchup, Worcester sauce, Marmite or Carnos Extract, &c. - also a spoonful of melted butter. Mix well with a fork and bind with one or two beaten eggs, reserving a little for brushing. Shape into a brick or oval, and press together as firmly as possible. Brush over with beaten egg, put in buttered tin, and bake for half-an-hour. Or it may be put in saucepan with 1 oz. butter or Nut Butter that has been made very hot. Cover and braize for 10
minutes. Turn and cook for another 10 minutes. Add a little flour and seasoning to the butter, and then a cupful boiling water, stock, or diluted "Extract," and allow to simmer a little longer. Serve with garnish of beetroot or tomatoes.

Tomorrow’s Story …

Crime and Punishment in the Kitchen.

Quotation for the Day …

Veal is the quintessential Lonely Guy meat. There's something pale and lonely about it, especially if it doesn't have any veins. It's so wan and Kierkegaardian. You just know it's not going to hurt you. Bruce Jay Friedman, The Lonely Guy Cookbook.

Victory Sausages.

Today, January 12th …

On this day in 1943 in the USA, an official of the Meats Division of the Office of Price Administration announced that for the duration of the war, frankfurters (or ‘hot dogs’) would be replaced with ‘Victory Sausages’, and that a proportion of the meat of the said sausages would itself be replaced with ‘an unspecified amount of soybean meal or some other substitute.’

The ostensible justification for the enforcement of ‘an arbitrary sausage formula’ was the shortage of real meat, but surely this could have been carried out without a name change for the product? Consumers have always assumed that the contents of a sausage are arbitrary, have they not? It was clearly a propaganda opportunity too good to miss – a simple name change to demonstrate anti-German sentiment, an idea resurrected from the previous war when ‘sauerkraut’ became ‘Liberty Cabbage’, and resurrected again when ‘French Fries’ briefly became ‘Freedom Fries’ (due to anti-French sentiment on the part of US soldiers in Iraq).

Propaganda aside, the government assured the populace that the sausage formula might be arbitrary, ‘but it would meet the standards of wholesome nutrition regardless of how much substitute matter it contained.’ Soybeans – ‘the vegetable meat’ - got a large amount of their own propaganda during this time. Numerous commercial products based on soy meal with names only marketing gurus could love came onto the market. One was called Soysage, and consisted of meal made from soy, peanuts, and cottonseed, augmented with wheat bran and wheat germ and flavoured ‘discreetly’ with dehydrated onion and spices. A food writer in 1943 in the New York Times waxed as lyrical as she could on its virtues, informing her readers that ‘as might be expected from its composition, Soysage is to be employed as a meat substitute.’ The package directions, she said ‘say to blend a cup of it with half a cup of water and form the mixture into patties or “sausages”, brown in a skillet, add more water and continue cooking for about eight minutes until the moisture is absorbed.’ The good folk in the New York Times kitchen felt the necessity to value-add to this recipe, and recommended adding a grated raw carrot, a grated onion, and a pinch of sage to the mixture, and after initial browning, to transfer them to the oven to finish cooking, and then serve them with ‘an appetizing tomato or parsley sauce.’

The ‘vegetable meat’ was also heavily promoted as a grain substitute, and the recipes supplied by various authorities for soymeal in this role sound rather more palatable than those for it as a meat substitute. Here is another New York Times recipe, also from 1943.

Soybean Bread.
Six cups sifted enriched flour, one cake yeast, three and a half tablespoons dry skim milk, two cups water, three teaspoons salt, two and a half tablespoons sugar, nine tablespoons high fat soybean flour and one and a half tablespoons shortening. Two cups of fluid milk may be used in place of the dry skim milk and water.

Monday’s Story …

Too much Molasses.

A Previous Story for this Day …

James Boswell used food to assist his amorous endeavours in 1763, in a story called ‘Food for Perfect Felicity’.

On this Topic …

Official First World War recipes for meatless dinners made with beans, were in THIS STORY.

Quotation for the Day …

People who enjoy eating sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made. Otto von Bismarck

Some baloney about Bologna.

Today, December 19th …

If you had been a Second Cabin guest aboard the famous “Lusitania” in 1911 on this day, this would have been your luncheon menu:

Lettuce Sliced Tomatoes
Bordeaux Sardines
Puree of Split Peas
Fillets Flounder, Florentine
Steak and Kidney Pudding
Roast Mutton and Onion Sauce
Corned Brisket of Beef with Cabbage
Spinach Parsnips, Creme
Baked, Boiled, & Mashed Potatoes
COLD
Roast Beef Brawn Ox Tongue
Galantine of Veal Bologna Sausage
Beetroot
Plums and Rice Small Pastry
Sago Pudding
Ice Cream
Apples Oranges Dates Roasted Peanuts
Cheese Tea Coffee

I bet the sago pudding was popular. What about the Bologna Sausage?

The mystery that is sausage meat causes us a great deal of food anxiety, and this is reflected in our word “baloney”, meaning nonsense or “rubbish”, which supposedly derives from the idea of Bologna (or “Poloney”) sausage. This is grossly unfair to Bologna, which has no more sinister a potential than any other type of sausage.

Genuine Bologna sausage is Mortadella. It has been made for at least 500 years from pure pork studded with distinctive cubes of white fat, flavoured with pepper, coriander, anise, and pistachio nuts, without smoking or drying. Someone once got an inspiration from it and created luncheon meat, which really is baloney.

The only constant factor in recipes for Bologna sausage in old cookbooks is the name. Robert May’s recipe (1660) comes pretty close to the real thing. He uses “a good leg of pork” and a lot of lard, flavoured with cloves, nutmeg, mace, pepper and caraway seeds. Rabisha’s “Poloney Sassages to keep all year” (1682) are all wrong from point of view of authenticity, although they do sound delicious: they are a smoked dried sausage made from a gammon of bacon, with cloves, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and red wine.

Mistress Margaret Dods, the Scottish pseudonymous author of the very amusing “Cook and Housewife’s Manual” (1856), says in a footnote: “Bologna sausages labour under the calumnious imputation of being made of asses’ flesh”. She does not commit herself to an opinion as to what the correct ingredient should be, but plays it safe by using a bit of everything in her version, and calling it:

Imitation Bologna Sausage.
Take equal weight of bacon, beef, pork, and veal. Mince, and season high with pepper, salt, and sage. Fill a well-cleaned gut, and boil for an hour; or smoke and dry them for future use.

Tomorrow: Another sort of shipboard victuals.