[Sca-cooks] period smoke houses?

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach david friedman:
>Stefan asked about smokehouses and Adamantius replied:
>
>>...
>>But we know they did it: there are both Roman and 17th-century 
>>recipes that call for hanging foods up to smoke in the kitchen fire 
>>or chimney. It may be that the smoke is incidental, and that the 
>>warm, dry, updraft is the aspect of the process these cooks were 
>>going for.
>>
>>I think, for what you're looking for, we would need a period book 
>>on pig farming for a really detailed description.
>
>Here are a few relevant bits from Le Menagier:
>
>To Salt Beef Tongues. In the right season for salting, take a 
>quantity of beef tongues and parboil them a little, then take them 
>out and skin them, then salt them one after another, and lay them in 
>salt for eight days or ten, then hang them in the fireplace, leaving 
>them there for the winter: then hang them in a dry place, for one 
>year or two or three or four.
>-------
>In Gascony, when it begins to get cold, they buy the tongues, 
>parboil and skin them, and then salt them one on top of another in a 
>salting tub and leave then eight days, then hang them in the chimney 
>all winter and in summer, as above, dry; and they will keep thus for 
>ten years. And then they are cooked in water and wine if you wish, 
>and eaten with mustard.
>------
>To Make Sausages. When you have killed your pig, take some chops, 
>first from the part they call the filet, and then take some chops 
>from the other side and some of the best fat, as much of the one as 
>of the other, enough to make as many sausages as you need; and have 
>it finely chopped and ground by a pastry-cook. Then grind fennel and 
>a little fine salt, and then take your ground fennel, and mix 
>thoroughly with a quart of powdered spices; then mix your meat, your 
>spices and your fennel thoroughly together, and then fill the guts, 
>that is to say, the small gut. (And know that the guts of an old 
>porker are better for this purpose than those of a young pig, 
>because they are larger.) And after this, smoke them for four days 
>or more, and when you want to eat them, put them in hot water and 
>bring just to boiling, and then put on the grill.

To some extent, these snippets kind of demonstrate my point, which is 
that the concept of building a smokehouse specifically for the 
preservation of meat might have been an unknown, or at least an 
unusual, concept, for many Europeans in period. Note that the tongue 
recipes don't even mention the word "smoke" (although the meat 
acquiring some degree of smoke flavoring seems pretty likely in the 
process). But I still think that smoking, in a smokehouse, is the 
result of a particular combination of climate, the need to process a 
relatively large amount of meat, and insect population, and that not 
every period European culture shows that combination.

Adamantius