[Sca-cooks] Smoked Meats in Northern Europe

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Oct 8, 2006, at 5:53 PM, David Friedman wrote:

> Reluctantly shifting the thread from fat chipmunks back to smoked  
> meat ...  .
>
> Does anyone here have experience with using smoking of meat and fish
> for reasonably long term preservation? My impression is that the
> smoked meat and fish commonly sold uses the smoking mainly for flavor
> and still requires refrigeration. Are there good sources for fish and
> meat that doesn't, and so would help solve the problem of managing
> Pennsic and other long events without a cooler?

I've seen salted and smoked herring (both, that is, not either/or)  
sold in Latino markets which, when soaked and cooked, do a  
surprisingly good impersonation of matjes herring. I expect that  
would hold up pretty well for Pennsic conditions, as long as it was  
kept _reasonably_ cool, well-wrapped, and in the dark (my chief worry  
would be rancidity).

I'm unsure of the extent to which smoking was actually used all over  
period Europe. I mean, we have clear references to things like  
sausages being hung in the smoke, or up high in the chimney, but I  
haven't seen too many references to things being smoked on any kind  
of an industrial scale,  nor can I recall any references to "if the  
meat be smoked do X", as there are with, "If it be salt," or "if it  
be soused, do Y".

This, of course, doesn't mean it wasn't done.

Adamantius