Lincolnshire sausage is the sage sausage of eastern England: coarse, chunky pork bound with bread or rusk and seasoned so heavily with sage that the herb is the first thing you taste. That is the whole identity, and it is enough — put one in a pan beside a Cumberland and the difference is obvious with your eyes shut, pepper on one side, sage on the other. It is also the profile a great deal of American breakfast sausage was built to imitate, so it will taste familiar to anyone who grew up on sage patties. Unlike Cumberland, the name is not protected. Lincolnshire butchers tried for a PGI from 2004 onward, but could not agree on one recipe, and the application was withdrawn in 2017; anyone may call a sausage “Lincolnshire”. This version follows the butchers’ proposed standard — at least 70% pork, sage, salt, pepper, bread or rusk, natural casing — with a coarse 10 mm grind and fresh sage. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from Marianski’s traditional Lincolnshire and the Lincolnshire Sausage Association’s proposed standard, and is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1589 g (3 lb 8 oz) pork shoulder (Boston butt) — 70%
- 681 g (1 lb 8 oz) pork belly, skinless — 30%
BINDER (% of meat weight)
- 477 g stale white bread or dry rolls, crusts on, torn (21%)
- 477 g cold water, to soak the bread (21%)
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 45 g fine salt (2%)
- 12 g white pepper (0.55%)
- 32 g fresh sage leaves, finely chopped (or 0.35% dried rubbed sage — about 8 g) (1.4%)
- 32 mm natural hog casing, about 20 ft (6 m)
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: Salt and fresh sage; the bread matters more than in most sausages. Compare it with Cumberland Sausage, which is the same construction seasoned with pepper instead.
- Soak the bread: tear the bread into the cold water and leave it 15 minutes, then squeeze it lightly through your fingers so there are no dry lumps. Bread rather than rusk is the old Lincolnshire way and gives a softer, slightly lighter bite.
- Grind coarse: chill the meat to −1 to 0 °C / 30–32 °F and grind once through a 10 mm (3/8”) plate. The chunky texture is half the identity; a fine grind turns it into a generic pork link.
- Mix: add salt, pepper and sage, then the bread, and mix just until the mass is sticky and uniform, about 2 minutes. The sage has to be everywhere — streaks of herb mean you stopped too early.
- Taste: fry a patty. The sage should be assertive but not medicinal. If it tastes like stuffing, it is about right; if it tastes like soap, there is too much dried sage — fresh sage is gentler, which is why it is the better choice.
- Stuff and link: fill the 32 mm hog casing and twist into 4–5 in (10–12 cm) links.
- Rest: refrigerate uncovered for 1–2 days before cooking, as Marianski directs. The bread and salt even out and the sage softens.
- Cook: fry gently in a little lard or oil, turning often, 15–20 minutes to 71 °C / 160 °F; or roast at 190 °C / 375 °F for about 20 minutes. Do not prick them — the bread is holding the juice.
- Sibling recipe: Cumberland Sausage from the same pork, and Irish Breakfast Sausage (Rusk) for the rusk-bound Irish cousin.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. Marianski’s “Lincolnshire Sausage – Traditional” is the backbone: 700 g semi-fat pork, 150 g dry roll or bread, 150 g water, 16 g salt, 4 g white pepper and 10 g fresh chopped sage per kilogram of mix, coarse 10 mm grind, 32 mm hog casing, rest two days. Here those numbers are re-based on the meat: (1) bread and water at 21% each of meat weight reproduce his 70/15/15 split; (2) salt is set at 2.0% of meat, about his figure; (3) the pork is split shoulder and belly to land near his “semi-fat”. The resulting meat content, about 70%, matches the Lincolnshire Sausage Association’s proposed minimum. Untested.
Where Lincolnshire sausage came from. Lincolnshire is pig country, and its butchers’ sausage is old enough that nobody has a founding date for it. What is documented is the modern attempt to protect it. In 2004 a group of thirteen Lincolnshire butchers began a PGI application; the Lincolnshire Sausage Association was formed in 2006 to carry it. The proposed standard was British pork with at least 70% meat and no more than 25% fat, bread or rusk, sage, salt and pepper, in natural pork casing. DEFRA turned the application down in 2012, and it was finally withdrawn in 2017. The sticking point was the county’s own butchers: they could not agree on a single recipe, and it was reported that most sausages sold as “Lincolnshire” were made outside the county. The name therefore remains free.
Why sage. No source explains why sage rather than pepper won in Lincolnshire. The same county’s haslet — a pork-and-sage meatloaf — shows the herb was the regional habit across products, not a quirk of one sausage.
Variations. Some butchers add a little nutmeg or parsley; others use rusk instead of bread; the association’s proposed standard allowed either. A skinless version is made into sausage-meat for stuffing and for Scotch eggs.
Sourcing and gear. Fresh sage from the garden is ideal and needs only chopping. Stale white rolls are better than sandwich bread, which is sweeter and gummier.
Still open. No pre-twentieth-century Lincolnshire sausage recipe has been compared; the association’s full proposed specification has not been read in the original.
The photo. The photograph shows a Lincolnshire sausage from Flickr (Caro Wallis), with the coarse grind and sage visible; it is not this recipe’s batch.
Read more on the site. A Grand Tour · Britain