SC - RE: What to do with sausage

[Phil & Susan Troy]

Knott, Deanna wrote:
> 
> Greetings,
> 
> Wolfmother wrote about Lucanian sausage being named after a friend named
> Lucan.
> 
> Oddly enough, I had a discussion about this with my friend named Lucan.
> 
> He told me that not only was it a personal name, it was a name of one of the
> tribes that came down into Italy.  They either beat up or settled next to
> the Etruscans (I know that spelling is wrong).  So, in this case is it named
> after their friend Lucan or is it named after the people (i.e. Polish
> sausage)?

Hard to say. Platina was near the center of a radical neo-classicist group
frequently charged with various forms of treason, and was imprisoned at least
a couple of times. Either out of devotion to things generally Classical, or
because his friends tended to need aliases, what with being regarded as
political criminals and all, or more likely both, he refers to an enormous
group of friends and acquaintances in "De Honesta Voluptate", all with vaguely
classical nicknames. One of them is probably Lucan, which may or may not be
coincidence. Whether these names are used outside of Platina's writings is
hard to say.

To add to this conundrum is the fact that a perfectly good Lucanian sausage
recipe (in fact more than one, IIRC) appears in Apicius. The recipe is a
little different, but the name almost certainly derives from a region
(Lucania). 

So, whether or not Platina is naming his Lucanian sausage after their Apician
counterparts, which may have survived in some form into Platina's lifetime, or
after that same region, or after one of his friends, is pretty much impossible
to say, as far as I know.  

> Should I just use it in whatever recipe calls for a good sausage?

If you have reason to believe the recipe calls for a cooked or ready-to-eat
sausage, yes, probably. If the reference is to something fresh or raw, then
presumably not.
 
> How was a heavily preserved sausage like this fixed for eating in the MA?

It could be cooked with eggs, as in the Anglo-Norman dish sawgeat, or possibly
stewed in a bean pottage, or eaten cold or hot with bread, or even possibly
with a salad, perhaps garnishing it in slices (as with High Plat's Polonian
Sawsedge, albeit those are a couple of hundred years later). Offhand I'm not
aware of any dishes Platina gives recipes for that call for cooked sausage in
them (What source does that Lombardy rice come from? I seem to recall it calls
for some type of boiling sausage.).
 
> On pastrami, does any know of other meats (besides beef or horse) that may
> have been cured like this?  Thanks.

If you mean the air-dried cure, for meat to be eaten, essentially, raw, like
basturma or prosciutto, pigs come to mind, of course, and then there is a
tradition (meaning I can't document it in period, at least not without further
research) of Italian Jews making gooseneck salami and gooseleg prosciutto.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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