Wiener Wednesday: Sausage in Biscuits

Posted on

by yinzerella

This week’s recipe comes from Better Homes & Gardens Meat Cookbook (1971 edition)

Sausage in Biscuits! That sounds tasty. Sausage: good. Biscuits: very good. Kinda like Nic’s British Sausage Rolls–which are just little pockets of heaven.

But then you get into the recipe and realize that this is made from refrigerator biscuits, canned Vienna Sausages, and creamed peas.

I am a masochist.

Or an idiot.

Help me, Jesus.

The liquid on these things–that unholy viscous sheen.

The first problem I encountered was how do I get them out of the can? after I grabbed at one and it disintegrated in my fingertips. However, I learned from The Vienna Sausage Website, that squishiness is a desirable quality in a Vienna sausage; it should be soft enough to be spread on a cracker. I also learned from  The Vienna Sausage Website that you can make something called Vampire Bat Faces with the little canned weenies. Too bad I didn’t know that before Halloween.

So this is what 99 cents of meat—sorry, mechanically separated chicken, pork and beef–looks like

I think that their hue may be their most unnerving quality. That’s the color of Barbie flesh. They also smell exactly like canned cat food (actually, I take that back, Brian’s food smells better).

So there you have it–4 Vienna Sausages in 4 little buttermilk biscuits. The rest I just made as biscuits. I love a biscuit. The eighth biscuit got a little mangled so I threw it out. And so they went into the oven.

For the frozen peas and cream sauce portion of the dish: they didn’t have frozen peas in cream sauce at the store (of course). But I had frozen peas at home so I just thought I’d try to throw together a white sauce.

But I didn’t have to. What did my little eye spy on the same shelf as the chicken gravy at the Safeway? Aunt Penny’s White Sauce!

White sauce! After all those Dinner is Served! recipe cards that said “make white sauce or used canned,” I finally found it! So this Wiener Wednesday was a joyous occasion!

And I was unimpressed. I nuked the frozen peas separately then heated the sauce and mixed them together. The consistency was mostly smooth. But the taste? Bland. So I go in with some salt and pepper. Hm. Celery salt. Eh. Old Bay. Yup. Lots and lots of Old Bay, it is!

So the little sausage biscuits came out of the oven and didn’t look bad. I topped them with the creamed peas.

I would’ve been thrilled if these were potato croquettes

That is some mid-century Better Homes & Gardens realness right here.

I believe I’ve gone all the way down the rabbit hole, kittens. For chrissake I just wrapped mechanically-separated meat in ready-made pastry and topped it with creamed vegetables.  The only thing that’s missing here is an aspic glaze.

And that’s the meaty surprise center.

 Ew. These little sausage things were gross. They not only smelled like canned cat food, they tasted like it, too–or what I think that canned cat food would taste like. I’m not so out of my gourd that I’ve cracked open a can of 9 Lives and shared it with Brian. Besides, if I did, he’d bogart the entire can.

Anyway, I just couldn’t take these down. I had to throw the weenie-filled biscuits out. So I took one of the plain biscuits and put some of the creamed pea mix on top. With a lot of extra Old Bay.

Dinner is Served. Barf.

Published by

yinzerella

30 thoughts on “Wiener Wednesday: Sausage in Biscuits”

  1. As an old person who grew up in the late 60s-early 70s, I can attest that Vienna Sausages were a mainstay cabinet food. Many were eaten in my youth, but none were ever placed in biscuit dough (likely because no one thought of that, because we made tiny pizzas out of them).

    The method of getting them from the can is: stick a knife in the can and push slightly against a sausage to release the suck (the “sauce” is actually a gelatin), and unmold like you would Jello. Then rinse, if you don’t like meat jelly.

    As with other suspect items of the processed food era, these were considered cocktail party food as well, along with pickled eggs and that fish shaped canned salmon mold that people used to do. Life was full of pickled and jelled food. Remember that chocolate pudding used to come in cans, a great deal of dinners included canned peaches “on the side” and vegetables that had a decidedly lack of crunch (canned again).

    I’ve often said that I’ve eaten so many preservatives that I will likely still retain human form long after I’m dead.

  2. I will Have to taste this for myself…..I actually enjoy Vienna Sausages. This recipe sounds AWESOME to me and now I am hungry….Heading to the market now…LOL. Kudos to nailing the the color of the little mystery meat treats…Barbie Flesh IS the color.

  9. Some things you just can’t unsee. Thank you for taking one for the team, and your honesty. I’m trying to find a suitably heinous vegetarian cookbook from the same era (or possibly a bit later – later 70’s to early 80’s) to recreate recipes from – scary things were eaten then. Not sure if that’s a rabbit hole I should be going down, but I do get to stalk second hand book stores, so right now it’s rather fun.

    1. I have one in my house from my godmother–I can’t remember the name of it, but it is all about high-protein food It’s “Meatless” something. 1970s. Lots of sesame seeds. It looked scary. Family Circle or BH&G just HAD to have a vegetarian cookbook, right?

  10. My mother has that cookbook the revved up BBQ sause in the back is one I still use for pork ribs. I love it. I love to mix it up and then slow cook it down. Yum.

  13. You are so brave. If I had found a recipe that listed Vienna sausages as an ingredient, I would have uttered a little cry and quickly closed the cook book while backing slowly away from it. Barbie flesh is indeed the perfect description of that canned meat atrocity. But then again, who am I to judge canned meat parts? I do enjoy an occasional slice of pan fried spam at breakfast. I blame my dad.

      1. I grew up on my dad slicing it into thing slices and pan frying it until it was crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. I think it tastes a lot like bacon that way. And I haven’t tried it, but have seen spam sushi – it’s called Spam Musubi – popular in Hawaii where they love all things Spam!

  14. There are very few things that I can’t look at without my stomach turning. Olives – which you know how much I ate – I can look at in photographs with equanimity. Similarly liver. I have eaten duck testicles and cow tongue and been fine. I have stared with morbid fascination and a steady stomach at depictions of cannibalism, and all the exhibits at the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities in Philadelphia – including bottled fetuses and tumors, and a 40lb colon. This post, however, made me feel a little queasy.

    1. It was the liquid on the little sausages that did it, I bet.

      I need to go to the Museum of Medical Oddities. I think I’d rather like it.

      AND, how were the duck balls? You saw my tongue, right?

  15. I have always wanted to know what those little Vienna Sausages are like, mostly because I see them in places like rural gas stations and drug stores and wonder who their market actually is. Finally the back-country truck stop makes sense: they’re catering to people who are most likely unconcerned with their own well-being.

  17. 1. “Barbie flesh” should be a crayon color. You nailed it perfectly.
    2. You threw out the mangled biscuit?! You are supposed to bake its mangled-ness and enjoy in all its deformed glory.
    3. How much of an old-person nerd am I asI sit here wondering what the sodium content is of those sausages? [ugh]

Talk to me!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.