[Sca-cooks] hanging meat - Sausage question

[Phil Troy/ G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Barbara Benson:
>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?

There are a couple of things to remember which the recipe doesn't go 
into, but which almost certainly apply. The first is that hog 
slaughtering in that part of Europe is probably happening in the late 
autumn (I don't remember the details, but I think Le Menagier 
mentions some time in late November). The point is, it's cold 
outside. It's also worth noting that there's no central heating, so 
kitchens probably didn't get all that hot in the winter unless you're 
near a cooking fire or an oven. Kitchens, lacking some of the 
labor-saving devices we're accustomed to, also tended to be pretty 
spacious, especially for a wealthy family like the Welsers.

The recipe states that you make this during the crescent moon. Again, 
presumably during a cool month; I don't know how this works, but I 
imagine there either is, or was believed to be, some idea that the 
weather was connected with the phase of the moon, since such 
references show up all the time in agricultural writings, and even in 
the modern Farmers' Almanac. It gives weights of the ingredients, and 
calls for just under 3% salt, which is roughly the same as the 
one-tablespoon-per-pound-of-meat rule commonly found in many modern 
sausage recipes. Not too shabby. It also says to stuff the sausages 
firmly (which also could be said to mean tightly to exclude air), and 
that the sooner they're dried, the better. Duh! ;-) It goes on to say 
not to hang them in the smoke or near the oven (smoke-flavored food 
may have been considered a bad thing by some, maybe a low-class thing 
suggesting you have a badly-tended fire or have to hang up your meats 
in the fireplace, having no other place -- interesting contrast to 
Plat, who in one sausage recipe specifically suggests it, but then 
he's a bourgoise Londoner, and possibly had less room to work), the 
idea being to prevent the fat from melting/rendering in the heat. 
This also, obviously, limits the ambient temperature to some extent. 
I really think Sabina is counselling us to keep these in a cool, dry 
place, the total effect being to keep them as cool as possible while 
still drying them out as fast as possible, in order to limit 
bacterial growth and safely preserve the food in the best manner 
possible.  She also gives some detail on the care with which they 
should be tied, suggests they be turned frequently (which both 
redistributes any free fluids that you want to dry out, and exposes 
any areas not previously exposed, to the air), and then take care to 
store them in a dry place.

If you look at a modern sausage recipe for something intended for 
keeping, like, say, Argentine chorizo (note that beef is often 
included in such recipes along with pork, very possibly because it is 
considered to dry more easily), there's usually a similar amount of 
salt and careful instructions on how to tie and hang them. The main 
difference, apart from the occasional chemical addition of things 
like saltpeter, is that, while Sabina's instructions imply a 
temperature limit, modern recipes instruct us in detail, laying 
numbers right on the line. But in the end, if you follow Sabina's 
instructions with some understanding of what she means, and why she 
says what she says, you end up with results that are largely the same 
as, and about as safe as, what you'd get from a modern recipe.

I usually work with period sausage recipes, but bearing in mind as 
much as possible everything I've learned from modern sausage recipes: 
the attention to cleanliness, the salt percentages, and the storage 
temperature, ideally in a well-ventilated place at a temperature 
above freezing, but well below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. 45 degrees F is 
a pretty good target.

Sabina does pretty much state that _if_ you follow her instructions 
carefully, they'll keep for a long time. She doesn't say, but I think 
it's implicit, that if you _don't_ follow them, things could be very 
different ;-)

Adamantius

You might cheat and sort of look at the process in an accelerated 
manner, to see what to look for: pick up some fresh, raw sausages and 
dry them in a food dehydrator, turning them occasionally.