[Sca-cooks] Bacon

[Stefan li Rous]

James asked:

<<< I know this has been brought up before, but I am having trouble  
searching
through my thousands of archived emails. >>>

Well, that is one reason I try to capture the "best of" comments and  
put them in the Florilegium.

<<< I am making bratwurst, a recipe out of the Sabrina Welserin text.   
What is
the bacon? Back bacon I feel, obviously not American bacon.
Take four pounds of pork and four pounds of beef and chop it finely.  
After
that mix with it two pounds of bacon and chop it together and pour
approximately one quart of water on it. >>>

There is this general file in the FOOD-MEATS section of the  
Florilegium on what is meant by "bacon" in various medieval recipes.

bacon-msg          (6K)  2/16/08    Medieval bacon.

In this file there are a number of redactions of this and similar  
sausages. Many folks don't indicate which type of bacon to use, but  
some do.

sausages-msg     (182K)  1/15/08    Period sausages. Making sausage.

"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. ...

Hauviette"

"The best fat to add for sausages is a hard back fat or kidney suet.  
Soft
fat tissue, such as the rubbery stuff found on, say, a pork shoulder
picnic or "arm", doesn't cook well, but translates to grease and rubbery
stuff. The Lucanian sausage calling for bacon probably really requires
pork belly, the stuff which, when cured, gives us the typical
American-style streaky bacon. That's a good fat to use. If, for some
reason, you can't use that for either all or part of your pork, you can
use fatback or kidney suet or leaf lard (unrendered!) to augment the fat
content of leaner meats. Alternately, you can use pork shoulder blade
roast, Boston blade and/or Boston butt (the piggy equivalent of chuck),
the name varies depending on where you are in the country, for all of
your meat. This'll give you a leaner, slightly drier sausage than
Platina probably intended, but it is not unpalatably dry, since it is
generally a well-marbled meat. My local butcher is on a health kick, and
has been using this cut for his Italian sausages. I think they're a bit
too lean, but apparently I'm in the minority.

Adamantius"

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas          StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****