Pigs in Blankets

Thaw puff pastry according to package directions. Cut pastry into strips just wide enough to wrap around sausages. Egg wash ensures golden color. Can be assembled and frozen, then baked directly from frozen (add 5 minutes).

The concept of wrapping a sausage in some form of pastry or dough has appeared independently across many food cultures. In Germany, Würstchen im Schlafrock — meaning "sausage in a dressing gown" — wraps sausages in puff pastry and has been a documented snack for generations. In Britain, pastry-wrapped sausage meat appears as the sausage roll, with Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management documenting it in 1874. The American version with its specific name has a more precise paper trail. American cookbooks of the 19th century used the phrase "little pigs in blankets" for a completely different preparation — oysters rolled in bacon, a Victorian-era savoury. The modern meaning of the term — small sausages baked inside pastry dough — can be traced to at least 1940, when a United States Army cookbook listed the recipe as "Pork Sausage Links (Pigs) in Blankets," making it one of the first clear documented uses of the name for the pastry-wrapped form. The dish's national moment came in 1957 when Betty Crocker's Cooking for Boys and Girls featured frankfurters wrapped in biscuit dough under the same name, reaching a mass audience at the height of America's suburban cocktail party era. The British version — small chipolata sausages wrapped in streaky bacon, with no pastry involved — is an entirely different preparation that shares only the name, and it only became a mainstream British Christmas dinner tradition from the 1990s onward. The American puff pastry version remains a party appetiser fixture from Super Bowl gatherings to holiday cocktail parties.