[Sca-cooks] hanging meat - Sausage question

[Barbara Benson]

St. Phlip>but it's held in controlled temperatures, and it's intact- in
other words, the muscle fibers are covered with the animal's own connective
tissue, so unwanted bacteria can't enter into the flesh, and the enzymatic
action can work undisturbed. Also, being gutted, the intestinal bacteria are
kept away from the meat.

OK, this brings up something I have been wondering about. I have been
wanting to experiment with period sausages but the drying/curing time has
been givint me fits of paranoia about making people sick. It makes sense to
me what you said above, but I don't see how it would work with ground up
meat in a casing.

Specifically I have been looking at Welserin (big suprise):

23 If you would make a good sausage for a salad
Then take ten pounds of pork and five pounds of beef, always two parts pork
to one part of beef. That would be fifteen pounds. To that one should take
eight ounces of salt and two and one half ounces of pepper, which should be
coarsely ground, and when the meat is chopped, put into it at first two
pounds of bacon, diced. According to how fat the pork is, one can use less
or more, take the bacon from the back and not from the belly. And the
sausages should be firmly stuffed. The sooner they are dried the better.
Hang them in the parlor or in the kitchen, but not in the smoke and not near
the oven, so that the bacon does not melt. This should be done during the
crescent moon, and fill with the minced meat well and firmly, then the
sausages will remain good for a long while. Each sausage should be tied
above and below and also fasten a ribbon on both ends with which they should
be hung up, and every two days they should be turned, upside down, and when
they are fully dried out, wrap them in a cloth and lay them in a box.

I always thoughtthe curing of sausage involved salt, heat, smoking or
something but here she specificaly says to avoid heat and smoke. So how is
this preserved and why won't it just rot?

Glad Tidings,
Serena