[Sca-cooks] Sca-cooks Digest, another sausage question

Louise Smithson helewyse at yahoo.com
Sat Oct 10 06:34:30 PDT 2009


Here is my 2c.
The fat in sausage is there to provide moisture BUT there is a huge difference between pork (or bacon) fat and lard.  The one melts slowly and retains it's essential shape.  It releases it's fat slowly, plus it is in discrete lumps within the sausage (this would be lard and suet), the other will essentially coat the outside of the lean meat particles and melt quickly.  Even with the same amount of pork fat in a recipe the end result of chopped fat vs lard will be very different. 
Yes Scappi has references to sausages cooked in wine. 
In the menus from the first service you often see the item: 
Sausages cooked in wine, cut in slices
but an awful lot of other things are cooked in wine too, and they most often tend to be salted/dried products e.g. ham, salted pork tongue, salted beef tongue etc.
Now the word for sausage used in this context is: Salciccione.  
When we look through the recipe section we find that the recipe for fresh sausages is: 
Per far mortatelle di carne magra di cigotto di porco
domesticon in volto nella rete: 
(translation here http://www.geocities.com/helewyse/stuffing.html#2)
with no mention of salciccione.  The method suggested for cooking these sausages is: 
"then one cooks them on the grill or in a frying pan with liquid
lard" no mention of boiling. 
At the end of the recipe the author states that "Of the mortatelle
and other salami that one makes from the said meat I will not talk as it
has never been my job/profession."  Indicating that the production of a cured pork sausage is not something he is familiar with. 
Now as far as the cooking recipes , recipe 113 in the second book is: 
Per cuocere ogni sorte di carni salate & salami and recipe 114 is Per cuocere ogni sorte di salami di porco. 
Which certainly seem to indicate a cured pork sausage NOT a fresh one. Essentially the recipe boils down to: 
Soak in water, boil in water and then boil in wine OR soak in water then boil in water OR soak in water then boil in water and wine (mixed). 
So the answer is maybe. 
Admitedly I have used this as justification for cooking sausage in wine and serving them cold for a feast. But the evidence is skimpy at best. 
Helewyse


>Majority of responses snipped for space. 
>Aldyth asked: 
Do you have to add pork fat? Would lard work?
Is there any pre16th C references to cooking sausages in alcohol
Johnnae responded:
You might look at Scappi. 



      


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