[Sca-cooks] Chorizo report and some questions

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach ana l. valdés:
>  >
>
>I went curious about the sausages and their roll in the Spanish kitchen
>after the reading of the nice report from lady Brighid! In a book called
>"Manual de Matanza", I did find some recipes and a through analys of the
>methods of killing and preserving the pork. The author says the "red
>sausage" can't ha been able to me made in Spain before the 17th century,
>since the red peppar did'nt come to Spain and became growed before that
>time.
>The author traces the spain typical sausages, "longaniza", and "morcilla" to
>the Romans and find the words taken from tbe Latin words "morellus" or
>"maurum", and "lucanicia".
>His theory is the sausages were white before the 17th century.
>Is it true?
>Ana

I think that would depend on what you mean by "white". By medieval
standards, bearing in mind the difference between, say, heraldic
colors and actual ones, fresh sausages might be seen as white in the
absence of some other coloring medium (such as paprika, which would
not have been in chorizo until the sixteenth century at the earliest).

On the other hand, German weisswursts are very nearly bone or ivory
white, as are some white puddings, and those are much more white than
some others, such as most fresh pork sausage, which are sort of
pink/tan when raw, and greyish-brown when cooked. I can see the
validity of calling many sausages "white", but where does that leave
those that really _are_ white?

And then there's the fact that many sausages that are air-dried or
smoked can be red without the addition of paprika. For example, Genoa
salami, whose redness is the red of raw meat, dried with some kind of
anti-oxidant. This would be the same principle for prosciutto or
serrano ham, but in sausage form.

Adamantius

--
"No one who cannot rejoice in the discovery of his own mistakes
deserves to be called a scholar."
	-DONALD FOSTER