[Sca-cooks] German Sausage recipes

[Volker Bach]

On Thu, 6 May 2004 22:20:58 -0400, "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" 
<adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote :

> Very possibly. It does specify these are sausages, and while it's 
> doable without casings, it's a lot easier with than without. Traget, 
> by the way, is perhaps the verb tragen, to carry. IOW, I suspect, 
> serve it forth.
 
I don't think that's likekly. The manuscript does not have many such 
imperative forms, but those it has are all formed with final sibilants 
(richcz, brings). It is also about as south German asyou can get, 
dialiectically speaking (if the writer wasn't so good at orthography it 
might class as upper rather than high German), and the only way you can 
have a final 't' in a singular imperative is in low German 'trag et' - 
'carry it', which in high and upper German would be 'trag es'. I don't 
think it's the plural imperative 'tragt' - the recipes are all adressed at 
the single cook, as is customary in medieval cookbooks.  

That said, I have no clue what it actually is. My initial guess was 
'Tragant' - gum tracaganth, but then I speculated on a possible graphemic 
reception of 'dragee' (pronounced the way a German reader would)

In all likelihood I will find find the word in another context one day and 
it'll be something perfectly obvious. that's what happened with 'tesem'. 

Giano