SC - What to do with sausage

[WOLFMOMSCA at aol.com]

Avelina:

There are several historical "couldabeens" which could explain the Lucanian
sausage recipe.  The first querstion to ask is why.  Why was this recipe
written down?  Couldabeen (also known as deductive reasoning, or historical
supposition) tells me these things:  We know that sausage was made at one
specific time during the year (or possibly twice, depending on the region).
We know that people ate dinner with their friends.  A couldabeen for this
recipe is that a dinner with a friend provided a flavor the original author of
the recipe found entertaining and delicious.  Their own sausage was made the
same way it was always made, hence no need to write down the recipe.  But the
original author may have wanted at least a few of these delicious sausages
he/she had at their friend's house.  Or they may have wanted to always make
the new flavor from that point onward.  

How many times have you asked for a friend's recipe?  Or desperately wanted to
recreate a dish you had in a spiffy restaurant?  How does one acquire the
recipe?  One asks for it.  The friend may have been named Lucan, or the
sausage may have been something cooked up "after the fashion of Lucan".  Or
the sausagemaking servant  of the friend was named Lucan.  Or it was simply
pretension.  If the author does not specifically call for the use of this
sausage in recipes, my supposition would be that the dish it was served up in
wasn't the important part to the author.  The sausage itself was, and would be
used in dishes where other sausage is called for, as a matter of personal
taste.  It is doubtful that a shred of information regarding "why" will ever
come to light, simply because it wasn't important to the author of the
collection.  But we can make certain historical suppositions (couldabeens)
based upon those other things we "know".  

As a sidebar, I have read messages about "Platina" on this list a lot, and I
do not possess said reference.  Could someone provide a full citation
reference for me?  I'm assuming it's Mediterranean.  Help, please?

Walk in peace,
Wolfmother
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