[Sca-cooks] Re: Sausage Recipes

[smcclune at earthlink.net]

As promised, here are the sausage recipes I have used:

Lucanian Sausages
Apicius, #61:
Lucanicae: ... Teritur piper, cuminum, satureia, ruta, petroselinum, condimentum, bacae lauri, liquamen, et admiscetur pulpa bene tunas ita ut denuo bene cum ipso subtrito fricetur.  Cum liquamine admixto, pipere integro et abundanti pinguedine et nucleis incies in intestinum perquam tenuatim perductum, et sic ad fumum suspenditur. 

Translation:  Lucanian Sausages:  ... Pepper is ground with cumin, savory, rue, parsley, condiments, bay berries, and garum.  Finely ground meat is mixed in, then ground again together with the other ground ingredients.  Mix with garum, peppercorns, and plenty of fat, and pine nuts; fill a casing stretched extremely thin, and thus it is hung in smoke. [Giacosa, p. 182]


To Make Sausages:
(Le Menagier de Paris 1393)
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 quarter as much 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 them on the grill. 

>From "Le Menagier de Paris" (online version, translated by Janet Hinson at http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Medieval/Cookbooks/Menagier/Menagier.html) 


20. Meat Sausages
On Right Pleasure and Good Health, Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi).  [Mary Ella Milham, trans.]

Take meat from a veal haunch, and cut it up small with its own fat or with lard.  Grind marjoram and parsley together, and beat egg yolk and grated cheese with a paddle, sprinkle on spices, make a single mass and mix everything with the meat itself.  Then wrap this mixture with pork or veal casing, after it has been cut off in pieces to the size of an egg.  Cook on a spit at the hearth on a slow fire.  The common people call this sausage mortadella because it is surely more pleasant a little raw than overcooked.  For this reason it is digested slowly, makes obstructions, creates stone, but nevertheless helps the heart and liver.

Sausages
On Right Pleasure and Good Health, Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi).  [Mary Ella Milham, trans.]

Into well-ground veal or pork fat, mix grated cheese which is not only aged but rich, well-ground spices, two or three eggs, beaten with a paddle, and as much salt as the batch requires, and saffron so as to make everything saffron-colored.  When they are mixed, put them in a well washed intestine which has been drawn out exceedingly thinly. Not good unless they have hardened for two days, they require cooking in a pot.  They can be kept, however, for a fortnight or more, if you add more salt and spices or if you dry them in smoke.

Lucanian sausage
On Right Pleasure and Good Health, Platina (Bartolomeo Sacchi).  [Mary Ella Milham, trans.]
If you want good Lucanian sausages, cut the lean and fat meat from the pig at the same time, after all the fibers and sinews have been removed.  If the piece of meat is ten pounds, mix in a pound of salt, two ounces of well cleaned fennel, the same amount of half-ground pepper, rub in and leave for a day on a little table.  The next day, stuff it into a well cleaned intestine and thus hang it up in smoke.

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On this last one, I cut the salt dramatically, as I was making them for immediate consumption.  However, I now have friends who have offered the use of their smokers, so I want to try this one again and smoke them to see how it changes the flavor/texture, and then I will add more salt.

Of them all, I think my favorite was the first Lucanian sausage -- despite the fact that I didn't know what "condiments" to add and did not have any bay berries to put in, they were very tasty.  Even my husband, who despises nuts and is generally not fond of sausage anyway, ate them and said they were good!

Arwen
Caerthe, Outlands
(Denver, CO)