Butchers of Nuremburg

The Nuremberg Twelve books were created as chronicles and books of the dead for brothers of two Nuremberg social foundations of the late Middle Ages.

In 1388, the wealthy merchant Konrad Mendel built a retirement home to house and feed twelve needy, old Nuremberg craftsmen. From 1425/26 every “Mendel brother” appeared in a full-page portrait in the Mendel house book. By 1806, when Nuremburg lost its status as an Imperial Free City, there were 857 illustrated pages with 765 illustrations craftsmen in folio format.

The diagrams show the brothers predominantly in the exercise of their craft, with distinctive production processes, typical tools, workshop equipment, materials and products. Early pictures give only the names and biographical data of the brother, but in later centuries short biographies were also included.

Mendel’s foundation model was copied in the early 16th century when the mining entrepreneur Matthew established a second Nuremberg “Twelve brothers house” with similar functions and a Memorial book to record the Landauer: the Landauersche Twelve Brother Foundation. This book was started in 1511 and includes 439 pages with 406 craft portraits.

These portraits are on-line, and are a wonderful resource, searchable by English subject, or by browsing through each of the books. They can be found at: http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/index.php?do=page&mo=8.

The books include several butchers with sausages:
Fridrich Plecher (died in 1467)

Hans Lengenfelder (died in 1436)

Hans Enßlinger (died in 1465)

Although these were male foundations, it appears that women who provided services there were also memorialized. Under the category of köchin (female cook), there 27 portraits of women. One of them, Anna Mullner (1582), has sausages cooking on a spit or grill.

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Mortadella

The word Mortadella is great, isn’t it? My sister used to frequent an Italian coffee shop in her neighborhood that was always full of old Italian men muttering darkly or seemingly arguing with each other every time she went in. It became known as Mortadella’s, because mortadella seems like a dangerous word with deathly connotations for non-Italian speakers (who speak French).

In fact, mortadella has a long history in the sausage world. The Eminent Maestro Martino of Como, in The Art of Cooking (Libro de Arte Coquinaria) offered a recipe for mortadella some time before 1475. It is found in the bookpublished by University of California Press in 2005 on page 56:

How to prepare veal mortadella

Take some lean meat from the haunch and chop it up with a little lard and some good veal fat, just as for the meat used in pies. Then take some finely chopped parsley and marjoram and an egg yolk, together with the meat; and then take some caul fat from a pig or mutton or from another type of meat, as long as it is good; and tie the mixture together in the caul fat, shaping it into pieces about the size of an egg; roast slowly on a spit so they don’t overcook.

Platina, who plagiarized virtually all of Martino’s recipes in “On Honest Indulgence” in 1475 (Falconwood Press, 1989) used the same recipe but called it meat sausage:

Take the meat from a haunch of veal and cut it up finely with the soft fat or with lard. Grind marjoram and parsley together. Beat the yolks of eggs together with grated cheese. Sprinkle with spices and work this into one mass and mix it all with the meat. Then cut pieces of sausage casing from pork or veal and roll up the meat mixture inside them in lumps the size of an egg. Cook them on a spit at the hearth over a slow fire; the common folk call this exicium; indeed when they are a little underdone they are more flavorful than when cooked too much. Consequently, they are slow to be digested and cause obstructions and stones. Nevertheless, this helps the heart and liver.

In 1604, Lancelot du Casteau published a somewhat different recipe for mortadella in France.

Source [Ouverture de Cuisine, T. Gloning (transcr.)]: Pour faire mortadelle. Prennez six liures de chair comme dessus, & mettez dedans deux onces de sel, demye once de poiure comme dessus, vne once de canelle en pouldre, quatre onces de parmesin rasp�, puis meslez bien auec la chair, & emplissez les boyaux, & faictes saulsisse, comme vous les voulez auoir grosse ou petites. Notez qu’il les faut manger chaudes auec quelques choux flori [>floris] ou autres..

Source [Ouverture de Cuisine, Daniel Myers (trans.)]: To make mortadella. Take six pounds of meat like above, & put therein two ounces of salt, half an ounce of pepper like above, an ounce of powdered cinnamon, four ounces of grated parmesan, then mix well with the meat, & fill the intestines, & make sausage, like you want to have, large or small.

Thanks to Kristen Wright, who published these sources on her website http://www.greneboke.com/recipes/mortadella.shtml.

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Images of Sausages

I have been scouring the internet for the last day or so for pictorial evidence for sausages in the medieval period, and got rather carried away. I’ll throw out a few at a time, hopefully in some sort of logical order. I may even mix in some text references and a poem, and I’ll keep pumping out the recipes and cookbook references, as I still have many to organize.

To start with, let’s go with preparing the intestines for use in sausage-making, from a 14th C Flemish illumination:

From the Canterbury Calendar, February 1280, we have a man warming his feet by the fire, with sausages overhead:

This was a fairly popular image, as you can see from this mid-1200’s detail in a Belgian psalter by an unknown illuminator (The J. Paul Getty Museum, Ms. 14, fol)

Finally, we have this fellow, who can be found in the Munchen Bayerishe State Library Lat. 3900 folio lvv. The picture was made in Wurzburg in about 1250:

For a much later picture of enjoyment of the fire, and sausages, we have Pieter Aertsen’s 1560s oil painting on wood, found in the Museum Mayer van den Bergh, Antwerp. Note the sausage on the ground in the bottom left corner. According to the Web Gallery of Art “The scene has all the elements of a rural booze-up. Much drink is being consumed, sausages grilled and bacon fried. There are festive biscuits on the table and a tray of waffles. Crowns like the one worn by the boy were used on the Feast of Epiphany, but also during other winter festivities, including Shrove Tuesday. Neither holiday is being celebrated here, however. The bird-cage next to the door on the left tells us that the scene is taking place in a house of ill repute, such as a tavern or brothel. Other elements combine to suggest the latter – the way the young man places his arm around the girl’s waist, the copious eating and drinking, the aggression symbolized by the man with the two weapons, and the foolishness reflected by the king’s crown.”

Gluttony, designed by Pieter Coeke van Aelst, made in Belgium 1560-75, shows Gluttony (to the left, sitting in the wagon) holding sausages in her right hand. The tapestry is found at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Finally, no discussion of gluttony, sexual license and sausages would be complete without Pieter Bruegel’s “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” painted in oil on panel in 1559 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna). In this painting, Carnival is represented as a fat butcher sitting on a beer barrel, wielding a spit that holds a pig’s head, sausages and other meats.

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Menagier de Paris – boudin, sausages and andouille

Menagier de Paris is my absolute favourite book of household management. It was written I the late 14th C, in French, and has much practical information and many recipes. The references here are from the version “The Good Wife’s Guide” translated by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose (Cornell University Press, 2009).

On page 257, in a section on dinners and suppers for great lords and others, we have

28. Dinner for a meat day served in 31 dishes and 6 courses:

First course. Grenache wine with sops of toasted bread, veal pasties [166], pimpernel pasties, boudin [6], and sausages [353].

and

29. Another meat dinner of 24 dishes in six course:

First course. Pasties of veal minced will with beef fat and marrow, pimpernel pasties, boudin, sausages, pipefarces [264], and small Norse pasties [258] de quibus.

On page 271, we have recipe 6.

“Item, to make boudin (blood sausage), collect the blood of a pig in a suitable basin or pan. When the pig has been butchered and the haslet (pork viscera) washed thoroughly and set to cook, while it is cooking, remove the clots of blood from the bottom of the basin and discard them. Next, mix peeled and minced onions, about half the amount as there is blood, with abut half as much entrecerele – that is, the fat found between the intestines – minced as small as dice. Add some ground salt, and stir the mixture into the blood. Grind together ginger, cloves, and a little pepper. Take the small intestines, wash them well, turn them inside out, and rinse well in running water. To remove the odor, place them in a pan on the fire and stir; then add salt, and do it a second and a 3rd time and then wash them. Turn them, this time outer side out, wash them, and set them to dry on a towel, rubbing and wringing them to remove moisture. (What are called the entrecrele are the large intestines, which have fat inside that is pulled out with a knife.) After you have measured and put in equal portions and quantities (half as much onions as blood and a quarter as much fat), and when your boudins (the intestines are used as sausage casings) have been filled with this mixture, cook them in a pan with the haslet broth, and prick them with a pin when they swell; otherwise they will burst. Nota that the blook keeps well for two, indeed even 3, days, once the spices are added. Some may use as spices pennyroyal, savory, hyssop, and marjoram, gathered when they are in flower and then dried and ground. As for the haslet, put it in a copper pot to cook on the fire, whole and without salt, and skim the pot along the edges, for haslet will foam. When it is cooked, take it out and save it to make pottage.

To make liver boudin. Take two pieces of liver, two pieces of lung, a piece of fat and put it in an intestine along with some blood, and for the rest do as above.

Nota that good boudin can be made with goose blood, provided that the goose is thin, for thin geese have larger intestines than fat ones.

Queritur: How are intestines turned inside out to be washed? Responsio: by a linen thread and a brass wire as long as a gauger’s (weights and measures official) rod.

7. Nota that some folks hang their pigs during the Easter season and the air yellows them; for this reason it is best to keep them in salt as they do in Picardy, although it seems that the flesh is then not as firm. Nonetheless, it is much nicer to serve fair and white lard than yellow, for no matter how good the yellow is, its unappealing color condemns it and discourages its use.

8. To make Andouille sausage. Nota that Andouille sausages are made from rectal guts and other large intestines, which are stuffed full of the other entrails to make sausage. These small intestines, when you want to put them in Andouille sausages, are split lengthwise into 4 parts. Item, you can make Andouille from thinly sliced stomach. Item, from the meat beneath the ribs. Item, from sweetbreads and other things that are around the “small haste” (spleen) when you do not wish to use the small haste intact. But first these entrails are deodorized in a pot with salty two or three times, as described above for boudin. The other things explained above, that is, the lower and other guts that must be filled to make Andouille sausage, are first pricked and sprinkled with a half ounce of powdered pepper and a sixth of fennel, ground, with a dash of finely ground salt sparingly added to the spices. When each Andouille is thus stuffed and filled, you place them to be preserved in salt with lard, on top of the lard.”

This section is followed by a long section naming and describing the parts of various butchered animals, and their costs, as well as instructions for salting and preparing hams. Recipe 8 looks quite a lot like Platina’s Lucanian sausage in his 1475 cookbook.

On page 278, there is a recipe for White porée. “50. White porée is so named because it is made from the white of leeks, pork chine, andouille or ham, in autumn or winter for a meat day. Understand that no other fat besides pork tastes right in it. First, you select, mince, wash, and blanch the leeks – that is, in summertime when the leeks are young, but in the winter when the leeks are older and tougher, they should be boiled instead of just blanched. …Likewise, cook minced onions and then fry them. Next, fry the leeks with those onions, then mix together to stew in a pot, with cow’s milk if it is a meat day. … If it is a meat day, when the leeks are blanched in summer, or boiled in the winter, as explained, set them to cook in a pot of salted meat or pork stock and add lard. Nota, this leek porée is sometimes thickened with bread.”

On page 280, at the end of a long section on cabbage identification, cultivation, and cooking, we find “If you prepare cabbage on a fish day, boil it, cook it in warm water, and add oil and salt. Item, some add meal. Item, instead of oil, some put butter in. On a meat day you might add pigeons, sausages and hare, coots and plenty of bacon.”

On page 287, there is a recipe for “Broth of pork tripe. Grind some ginger, cloves, grain of paradise, etc., then mix with vinegar and wine. Take some toasted bread that has been soaked in vinegar, grind it, strain and mix all together. Then cut the viscera in pieces and fry them in lard. Pour stock of boudin or offal into a pot along with the bread and spice mixture, and boil. Add the pieces of fried viscera, bring to a boil once, and serve.”

On page 317, there are recipes for both summer Andouille and meatballs (also frog’s legs, but that’s a whole separate issue).

“254. Summer Andouille. Take the tripe of a lamb or kid and remove the membrane, cook the remainder in water with a little salt, and when it is cooked, mince it finely or grind it. Beat 6 egg yolks and a tablespoon of fine powdered spices together in a bowl; then add and mix in the tripe. Next, spread it all on the intestinal membrane and roll up as for sausages. Tie loosely with thread lengthwise and then tightly crosswise; and then roast on the grill. Remove the thread before serving. Vel sic (or this way): make into balls, that is, using the membrane itself, and fry these balls in lard.

255. Meatballs. Take lean meat from a raw leg of mutton and the same from a lean pork leg. Chip it all together finely, then in a mortar grind ginger, grains of paradise, clove, and sprinkle this over the ground chopped meat. Mix in some egg white, but no yolk. Using the palms of your hands, form the raw meat and spices into the shape of apples. When the mix is all well shaped, cook them in water with some salt. When done, remove them and spit them on skewers of hazelnut branches to roast. As they start to brown, have ready some ground and sieved parsley mixed together with four, neither too thinly nor too thickly. Take the meatballs off the fire and put a dish under them, and holding the spit over the dish, turn it and coat the balls well. Put them back over the fire as many times as needed for them to turn quite green.”

That last sentence always makes me giggle, as I associate meatballs turning green with something quite unpleasant. This phrase is awkward in several ways!

The last mention of sausage in Menagier comes in recipe 353, on page 336: “To make sausages after killing a pig. Take some meat and chops, first from the part they call the filet and then from another area, and some of the finest fat, as much of one as the other, in the amount for the number of sausages you want. Have this finely ground and chopped by a pastry cook. Then grind fennel and a little fine salt. Next, thoroughly mix the fennel with a quarter as much of powdered spices. Combine well the meat, spices, and fennel. Fill the intestines, that is, the small intestines, with this mixture. Know that the guts of an old pig are better than those of a young pig because they are larger. After this, smoke them for four days or more. To eat them, bring once to a boil in hot water and then grill.”

The key bit of information for me in this recipe is that I don’t have to chop all the meat myself. I have a manual meat grinder, and access to an electric meat grinder but had figured that I should do at least some of my sausages by chopping the meat with a knife. I will still do that, but I feel much better knowing that 14th C Parisian housewives didn’t have to do all that work, so I can use my grinder for most of the sausages.

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Lucanian Sausage from cookbooks in the Martino tradition

Lucanian Sausage shows up again in 1475, in On Honest Indulgence by Platina, published in Venice in 1475 (Falconwood Press, 1989),

Lucanian Sausage

If you want good lucanian sausage, cut up the lean meat and fat of a sow together, after removing all fibers and nerves. And if you have ten pounds of meat, use one pound of salt and two ounces of fennel well cleaned and as much half-ground pepper all mixed together. After you blend it, let it sit for a day on a little table. The next day stuff it into an intestine that has been well cleaned and thus hang it in the smoke.

This recipe is much more like modern loukanikos, with fennel as an important ingredient. Also, the pine nuts of the Apicius versions have disappeared. Modern Italian lucanian sausage is associated with northern Italy, so it is not surprising that this recipe was published in Venice.

I will be returning to this cookbook, as it also has recipes for meat sausage, forcemeat from liver, and sausages.

The Neapolitan Recipe Collection (Cuoco Napoletano, by Terence Scully The University of Michigan Press, 2000), likely written in the second half of the fifteenth century in or around the Aragonese court at Naples, has a recipe for “Good Sausages” on page 190 that is virtually identical:

Get lean pork or lean and fat veal and beat it well – and mind that there is no gristle in it; if there is ten pounds of meat, use half a pound of salt, two ounces of well cleaned fennel and two ounces of roughly ground pepper; mix everything together and let it stand for a day; then get very well cleaned intestines and stuff them with this mixture, and set the sausages to dry in smoke.

Finally, Maestro Martino has, on p 57:

When you wish to make good sausage with pork or other meat

Take some lean meat and some fatty meat trimmed of all its sinew and finely chop. If you have ten librae of meat, add one libra of salt, two ounces of well-washed fennel seeds, and two ounces of coarsely ground pepper. Mix well and let set for one day. Then take some well-washed and trimmed intestines and fill with the meat and then smoke to dry.

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Anglo-Saxon Sausage References

I’m feeling a desperate need clean my house for the holidays, so the next few posts will be short, just so I can put books away.

I have found very little information about sausages in Anglo-Saxon England, so this will be an area for more digging later on. In the meantime, from Ann Hagen’s “A Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food Processing and Consumption(Anglo-Saxon Press, 1992, p 55) I have: “Minced meat eked out with offal, including such organs as the lights which are not now normally sold for human consumption, cereals, herbs and suet, and sometimes incorporating the blood of a slaughtered – or living – animal, s an ancient dish found in many parts of the British Isles. Mixtures of this type are often put into animal membranes to make sausages or puddings. Mearh is used to translate ‘a pork lausage’ (lucanica) in the Epinal and Erfurt glosses. Mearh-geoecc, meah-hoeccel are terms for meat puddings; haccian means ‘to chop up’. Such puddings or sausages could be made from the meat of virtually any edible animal or bird and could be boiled or grilled: in the latter case no further container was necessary.

On page 60, she notes that “poultry and other foods are illustrated being delivered to the table on spits in the Bayeux Tapestry. In another scene food on spits is being passed from a stove to what may be a sideboard.

On page 61, she says “a tenth-century manuscript shows three diners, two of whom are being offered food on spits by kneeling attendants. The food here is cylindrical in form, and not immediately recognisable, though it may consist of lengths of sausage, or, more probably, eels. I have tracked this image to the British Museum’s website, and have found a note that it comes from a manuscript probably of the tenth century (Tiberius, C. vi., fol. 5, vº). I haven’t been able to find anything but this line drawing, yet. We’ll see what my inquiry to the British Museum turns up.

On page 73, she says that “The Old English Rule of Chrodegang refers to courses, so that a meal might have consisted of soft (?new) cheese, then ‘delicacies (i.e. meat puddings/sausages), then fish or vegetables as the thriddan sande (lit: third sending), or the order might be meat puddings`sausages, then cheese then vegetables or stewed meat.

In A Second Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Food and Drink: Production and Distribution (Anglo-Saxon Books, 1995), p 111, Hagen says that according to the Anglo-Saxon Rectitudines Singuloarum Personarum, “The swineherd whose job it was to look after the lord’s herd of pigs received some perquisites, since he had no pigs of his own, like the gafolswane:

‘The swineherd who looks after the lord’s herd of the pigs on his estate is entitled to a pig from the sty, and the entrails [?], when he has seen to the bacon/lard, and otherwise he has the same rights as other slaves.’

This is very similar to the swineherd’s payment on the Glastonbury estates in the twelfth century. He received one suckling pig every year, and the entrails of the best pig,  but also the tails of all pigs slaughtered, presumably to make pig-tail soup, which was regarded as something of a delicacy. It is possible that the swineherds put the entrails to use in making sausages, since filling intestines with chopped meat is first mentioned as a Graeco-Roman practice.

On page 114, she mentions “an inventory of the stock at Yaxley included ‘thirty pigs and 100 flitches and all the delicacies that go with them…and one fat pig’. [unfortunately, there is no clue as to what the ‘delicacies’ included: lard, perhaps, or meat puddings or sausages.].

On page 190, in a discussion of tabooed food, Hagan notes that in the New Testament, James suggested that Gentiles should abstain from food offered to idols and from things strangled, and from blood. These two views recur during the Anglo-Saxon period…Fulke, Archbishop of Rheims, writing to King Alfrted about 890, repeats the injunction against food offered to idols, things strangled and blood. Wulfstan’s Canons of Edgar state, ‘And we instruct that no Christian man consume blood.’ … The second injunction was complied with since butchery techniques involved killing by pole-axing and/or cutting the throat of the creature concerned. If an animal was strangled, the supposition is that blood would remain in the tissues, and, as this is a perfect medium for microbes, decay would set in quickly. However, blood is an extremely valuable source of nutrients, and the danger of infection would be destroyed by cooking. The taboo may have led to cooking blood in sausages and puddings, where it was not recognisable as a forbidden substance.

The final bit of evidence is sketchy, as it pre-dates the Anglo-Saxon period, with an old folk saying that may post-date it. Joan P. Alcock, in “Food in Roman Britain (Tempus Publishing, 2001) points out on page 34 “The importance of pork to the Celts is evidenced from classical and Celtic writings. Strabo said of the Belgae in Gaul, that ‘they have large quantities of food together with milk and all kinds of meat, especially fresh and salt pork’. On page 35, she states that “On some late Iron Age sites in the South-East, mainly the high status oppida, the pig bones reached 50 per cent of the bones of the three main animal species, indicating the value of pork in the food chain. Pigs are ideal animals to be kept in small numbers and in backyard pens as they can easily be fattened on household waste, turning it into meat and manure. They yield meat, lard, brawn, sausages and pigskin. Everything can be used in a pig, goes the old saying, except the squeal.

 

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Lucanian Sausage – Apicius Versions

Apicius is a recipe text that appears to have collected recipes from at least the first C AD (and some recipes, including Lucanian sausage, may be older, as these sausages came from Magna Graecia and were introduced to Rome by soldiers after the first conquests in the second century BC (Apicius, by Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, Prospect Books,2006, p 16). The recipe collection was gathered into its current format at some time during the 4th C AD (ibid, p 18).

My first really good translation of Apicius was Apicius: The Roman Cookery Book, translated by Barbara Flower and Elisabeth Rosenbaum (London: Peter Nevill Limited, 1958). It has the original Latin text on one page, with the English translation facing it. The book was recommended to me by my cooking mentor, who also happened to be a classical scholar.

Lucanian Sausages. Lucanian sausages are made in a way similar to the above (ie like stuffed wombs, 2.3.1). Pound pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, mixed herbs, laurel-berries, and liquamen, and mix with this well-beaten meat, pounding it again with the ground spice mixture. Work in liquamen, peppercorns, plenty of fat and pine-kernels, insert into a sausage-skin, drawn out very thinly, and hang in the smoke.

Grocock and Grainger’s version:

Lucanicae. Lucanicae are made in a similar way to that written above. Pound pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, bay berry spice (bay berries contain a large pale brown seed, which when roasted and ground adds a distinct bay flavour, while the leaves add flavour but cannot be eaten) and liquamen. Add meat which has been thoroughly pounded so that it can then be blended well with the spice-mix. Stir in liquamen, whole peppercorns, plenty of fat and pine nuts. Put the meat in the skins, draw them quite thinly and hang them in the smoke.

Grocock and Grainger is my new favourite version of the text. It has an extensive introduction providing historical context, and chapters on cooks and ancient cookery books, cooking techniques in the ancient world, Roman weights and measures, the language of Apicius (vocabulary of cooking techniques), and the editorial principles and methods used for this translation. It also includes a translation of The Extracts of Apicius by Vinidarius, a high status Ostrogothic gourmet of the late 5th or early 6th C. There is also a good glossary, original sources on Apicius, a chapter an garum and liquamen, a concordance of recipes with earlier versions, and a companion book of redacted recipes by Sally Grainger.

Roman Cookery Revised, by John Edwards (Hartley & Marks: 1986), is a much less successful book. It has only redacted recipes with no original text.

Lucanian Spiced Sausage
1/2 t. pepper
1/2 t. cumin
1 t. savory
1 T parsley
pinch of rosemary (or rue)
6 cloves or juniper berries (or laurel berries)
1 lb finely ground beef or pork
1/4 c almonds, grated
1 c bread crumbs
1/4 c beef stock
1 raw egg
casings
2 T olive oil

In a mortar, grind together pepper, cumin, savory, parsley, rosemary (or rue), and cloves or juniper berries. Combine with meat, and add nuts and bread crumbs. Moisten with stock, and bind with well beaten egg. Stuff into sausage casing, and sauté in olive oil in a covered pan, over low heat for 30 minutes.

Apicius: Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome by Joseph Dommers Vehling New York: Dover Publications, 1977, reprinting a text originally published in 1936) does not provide the Latin text, but has extensive notes on the translation, and a translation of Vinidarius. Unfortunately, the editorial comments may help with recipe reconstruction, but Vehling puts a lot of his own interpretations into the text. One thing I like about this version is the extensive bibliography of manuscripts and printed editions, with reproductions of some of the title pages.

Lucanian Sausage (Lucanicae). Lucanian sausage or meat pudding] are made similar to the above: crush pepper, cumin, savory, rue, parsley, condiment, laurel berries and broth; mix with finely chopped [fresh pork] and pound well with broth. To this mixture, being rich, ad whole pepper and nuts. When filling casings carefully push the meat through. Hang sausage up to smoke.

A Taste of Ancient Rome, by Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa (University of Chicago Press, 1992) has recipes from Apicius and others. Her translation, on page 182, is:

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.

According to the website “Sausage Obsession” (http://www.sausageobsession.com/loukaniko-loukanika-sausage/) It is widely believed that the Greek Loukaniko originated from Lucanian sausage. Lucanian sausage is credited as being the precursor to such sausages as the Portuguese linguiça, the Bulgaria loukanka and the Latin American/Philippine longaniza.

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Roman Sausages (sources other than Apicius)

This started to be a study of Apicius and his Lucanian sausage recipe, until I realized I have at least four different translations of Apicius, and Apicius gives several different sausage recipes (not counting the skinless sausages). Therefore, I will do an entry later, comparing all the versions of all of Apicius’ sausage recipes. For today, I will focus on documentation for Roman sausages from other sources.

Graffiti from an inn/bar attached to the Sububan Thermae (maritime baths) in Herculaneum: [a bar tab] …Some nuts …? coins; drinks: 14 coins; lard: 2 coins; bread: 3 coins; three meat cutlets: 12 coins; four sausages: 8 coins. Total: 51 coins (http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%20pompeii.htm)

One of the most important Pompeii survivals is a weekly shopping list, scratched onto the wall of one house. Next to each item is its price: eight asses for bread, two asses for bread for the slave; 40 asses for olive oil; sausage, cheese, leeks, whitebait and onions. Nothing that would look odd on a modern shopping list — except perhaps the slave. (Taken from a new book on regional Italy, ‘Tarantella’, edited by Clive Aslet (Cumulus), report by Harry Mount published in The Telegraph, October 1, 2013)

The images below, and the line drawing, are from the inn at the corner of Mercury Street in Pompeii (http://www.pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R6/6%2010%2001.htm).

Four men are drinking, about a round table, while a boy waits on them; two of the figures have pointed hoods like those seen to-day in Sicily and some parts of Italy. Strings of sausage, hams, and other eatables hang from a pole suspended under the ceiling. Some of the figures in the pictures are accompanied by inscriptions. (from Mau, August. (2013). pp. 394-5. Pompeii: And Art. London: Forgotten Books. (Original work published 1899).

VI.10.1 Pompeii. March 2009. Fresco from south wall of rear room. Apparently, the frescoes on the south wall were damaged by bombing in 1943. Older pictures show much more of the people.

Photo by Tatiana Warscher. With kind permission of DAI Rome, whose copyright it remains.

VI.10.1 Pompeii. Stereoview by R. Rive of fresco from south wall of rear room, c.1860-1870s. Photo courtesy of Rick Bauer.

“A butcher prepares a cut of meat” (I can’t find a source for this image, and I’m not sure if it is Greek, Roman or Gaulish – I have seen it attributed to all three).

Update: Here is a complete picture of the object, a Italian marble relief carving of a butcher and his wife, from 200 BC to 200 AD, found in the Staatliche Kunstammlungen Dresden. Its size is H: 38,0 cm, B: 103,5 cm, T: 5,0 cm, and the inventory number is 418:

Varro, “On the Latin Language” Book V, 111, says “An intestine of the thick sort that was stuffed, they call a Lucanica, ‘Lucanian’, because the soldiers got acquainted with it from the Lucanians, just as what the found at Falerii they call a Faliscan haggis; and they say fundolus ‘bag sausage’ from fundus ‘bottom’ because this is not like the other intestines but is open only at one end: from this, I think, the Greeks called it the blind intestine. From the same fartura ‘stuffing’ were called the farcimina ‘stuffies’ in the case of the vital organs for the sacrifice, whence also farticulum ‘stufflet’; in this case, because it is the most slender intestine that is stuffed, it is called hila, from that hilum ‘whit’ which Ennius uses: “and of loos, not a whit does she suffer”.Because at the top of this stuffy there is a little projection, it is called an apezabo, because the projection is like the apex ‘pointed cap’ on a human head, The third kind of sausage is the longavo, because it is longer than those two others. (https://archive.org/details/onlatinlanguage01varruoft).

Statius mentions Lucanian sausage and Faliscan haggis (Silvae, Book 4, 9, line 35 in http://www.poetryintranslation.com). Cicero, in his letter to Papirius Paetus describes Lucanian sausage as an appetiser “Yet it is no use building any hope on your hors d’oevre. I  have quite abolished that: for in old times, I found my appetite spoilt by your olives and Lucanian sausage” (Letters of Marcus Tullius Cicero with his Treatises on Friendship, 9.16.8).

Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa, in A Taste of Ancient Rome (University of Chicago Press, 1992, p 13) states that “Bacon, all types of sausage, and hams plumped out the Roman diet. The most popular sausage, lucanica, though now traditionally considered a northern Italian specialty, actually came from the district of Lucania, in the southern region of the peninsula. “I am a Lucanian sausage, the daughter of a Picenum-bred sow; I provide a delightful wreath with which to garnish white polenta” wrote Martial (13.35) in a note accompanying a gift of these sausages to a friend. Here we learn that the idea of combining polenta (though made from spelt and not corn) and sausage was already established many centuries ago.” http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/martial_epigrams_book13.htm has a slightly different translation of Martial: “Daughter of a Picenian pig, I come from Lucania; by me a grateful garnish is given to snow-white pottage.”

Anthimus, a 6th C doctor and representative of the Ostrogothic king in Italy, wrote a treatise called De observatione ciborum epistula (The Letter on the Observance of Foods) addressed to Theuderic, king of the Franks in the area around Metz. Its culinary contents, and information on the cuisine and dietary customs of the Franks is an important link between the cooking of classical antiquity and the medieval world. It is considered the first cookery book published in what is now France. At paragraph 20, Anthimus says “Calf belly is suitable boiled. I do let people eat on occasion the bacon that is put into the stuffing”.  Mark Grant, in his translation of Anthimus (Prospect Books, 1996) notes that belly is mentioned with sausages and other foods by Martial (Epigrams 4.46.8, where Lucanian sausage and Faliscan haggis are mentioned as Saturnalian food gifts). Petronius (Satyricon 49.9, http://www.gutenberg.org) describes a cook slashing a hog’s belly so that sausages and meat puddings begin tumbling out. In Apicius, there is a recipe for boiled belly filled with minced pork, brains, egg and spices. According to Grant, Anthimus is obviously keen that people should not eat the stuffing every time the dish is served.

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13th C Andalusian Merguez

Merguez are among my favourite sausages. I first encountered them as a teenager, traveling to the south of France on vacation (I was a military brat and my dad was based in Germany, so it was a day’s drive from home). Merguez were not only delicious, they were exotic to this kid who had spent many years in rural southern Ontario and had never tasted lamb before. I miss the Algerian butcher who used to have a shop near my house; he could whip up merguez in no time, and tie the sausages into decorative ropes like these:

I have two versions of a receipt from an anonymous Andalusion cookbook of the 13th C. The first is a translation by Charles Perry of the Arabic edition of Ambrosio Huici Miranda with the assistance of an English translation by Elise Fleming. Stephen Bloch, Habib ibn al-Andalusi and Janet Hinson of the Spanish translation by Ambrosio Huici Miranda. It comes from A Collection of Medieval and Renaissance Cookbooks (Fifth Edition, 1992, Volume II) put together by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook.

Recipe for Mirkas (Merguez Sausage)

It is as nutritious as meatballs (the Spanish “albondiga” meaning “meatball” is from the Arabic “al-bunduqa” meaning “hazelnut” which suggests that the original meatballs were tiny) and quick to digest, since the pounding ripens it and makes it quick to digest, and it is good nutrition. First get some meat from the leg or shoulder of a lamb and pound it until it becomes like meatballs. Knead it in a bowl, mixing in some oil and some murri naqi, pepper, coriander seed, lavender, and cinnamon. Then add three quarters as much of fat, which should not be pounded, as it would melt while frying, but chopped up with a knife or beaten on a cutting board. Using the instrument made for stuffing, stiff it in the washed gut, tied with thread to make sausages, small or large. Then fry them with some fresh oil, and when it is done and browned, make a sauce of vinegar and oil and use it while hot. Some people make the sauce with the juice of cilantro and mint and some pounded onion. Some cook it in a pot with oil and vinegar, some make it rahibi with onion and lots of oil until it is fried and browned. It is good whichever of these methods you use.

The second version of this recipe comes from La cuisine andalouse, un art de vivre Xie-XIIIe siècle, by Lucie Bolens (Paris: Albin Michel 1990), p 73.

Saucisses (Mirkas)

La valeur nutritive vaut celle des boulettes; est facile à digérer car le haché est comme une cuisson, il facilite une digestion rapide. C’est déjà bon à manger le lendemain du jour où on l’a fait. On prend de la viande de gigot ou de l’épaule d’agneau que l’on hache autant que pour des boulettes; on pétrit dans une grande bassine avec un soupçon d’huile et un peu de garum macéré, de poivre, de coriander sèche, du spic-nard et de la cannelle. Ensuite, on ajoute trois fois la quantité de graisse non hachée, mais coupée au couteau ou battue sur la planche. On cuit tout jusqu’à ce que cela se défasse, on en farcit les tripes lavées et cousues avec du fil, en utilisant les ustensiles adéquats, faits pour farcir; les saucisses peuvent être grandes ou petites. Ensuite, on les fait frire dans une friteuse avec de l’uile douce et lorsque c’est doré, on apprête une sauce de vinaigre et d’huile qu l’on consommé très chaude. Certains font la sauce avec du jus de coriander verte, de la menthe et un peu de jus d’oignons émincés et de fromage. On la fait cuire dans une marmite avec de l’huile et du vinaigre. De quelque façon qu’on le fasse, d’est bon.

Bolens doesn’t include a second merguez recipe that Perry has:

Mirkas with Fresh Cheese

Take some meat, carefully pounded as described earlier, add fresh cheese that isn’t too soft lest it fall apart, and half a piece of cut-up meat and some egg, for it is what holds it together, and pepper, cloves, and dry coriander. Squeeze on it some mint juice and cilantro juice. Beat it all and use it to stuff the innards, which are tied with thread in the usual way. Then fry it with fresh oil, as aforementioned, and eat it as by nibbling, without sauce, or however you like.

The Andalusian cookbook also has several recipes for meatballs, including a vegetarian version made of chickpeas. Although some charcutiers include meatballs in the category of “skinless sausages”, I will resist the temptation to go down that rabbit hole until I have finished with collecting stuffed sausage recipes.

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Medieval Islamic Sausages

The sausage project is being researched in no particular order, except what happens to fall into my hands each day. Today, the top of the book pile is Medieval Cuisine of the Islamic World, by Lilia Zaouali (University of California Press, 2007).

On page 52, I learn that medieval recipes mention a variety of cooking utensils, including copper funnels for filling sausages (in gut casings).

On page 88, I find “Liver Sausages in the Manner of Caliph Al-Mu’Tamid”, from the Kitab al-tabikh by Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq, which may have been composed in Baghdad in the second half of the 10th C. According to the author, this dish is called usban, which means ‘packets’: the livers are rolled up in caul fat (the word thubur refers to the lacy abdominal membrane that is often used in Europe for making sausages) and baked. In Tunisia today it is prepared in the same manner, but it contains additional organ meats and is left out in the sun to dry before being conserved. In southeastern Italy, in Lecce (Puglia), where small pieces of liver, heart, and tongue are similarly tied up with gut, these little sausages are known as turcinieddhi.

Take some kid and lamb livers, and boil them in water, thyme, and oil without quite cooking them all the way through. Cut the [half-boiled livers] like thin belts. Take the nets [thubur] of the kids and lambs and, after having washed them, put them into boiling water until they are stretched, then fill them with the livers, [which in the meantime have been] cooked with murri, rue, and thyme. Now close [-the casings] up, tying them with the intestines, [which have been] turned inside out and washed with salt and celery. Soften with oil and put in the oven.

Skipping forward in time to the 13th C, I learn on page 44 that the Muslim West was known in cookbooks for its mutton sausages (mirqas, better known today as merguez). No recipe is given here, but I have some Andalusian Islamic recipes elsewhere, so I can go digging for a period recipe, to see how it compares with the modern merguez.

On pages 68 and 69, I learn about tharid, a kind of national dish of the Arabs in the early years of Islam. Though the prophet Muhammad declared tharid to be the best of dishes, it is simply crumbled unleavened flat bread bread soaked in meat broth, then arranged in a pyramid with pieces of meat set around it. There are many recipes for tharid; some spicy, some made with cheese or curdled milk, vinegar or sugar. Ibn Sayyar mentions a dozen versions of tharid, some of which are attributed to 9th C cooks; among them is a tharid using meat and tripe sausages cooked in broth.

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