I have recently been reading “The Medieval Cook” by Bridget Ann Henisch (The Boydell Press, 2009). She has a few interesting notes about sausages and sausage-makers.
She quotes Andrew Boorde, in the sixteenth century who “remarked: ‘A good coke is halfe a physycyon. For the chefe phsyscke [the counceyll of a physycyon excepte] doth come from the cytchyn, wherefore the physycyon and the coke … must consult together for the preparacion of meate for sycke men.” (p 22). Sadly, sausages were not considered to be part of the optimal diet for good health. The Renaissance “French dietician Estienne offers some detailed critical comments about popular tidbits that we would now call appetizers. A number of these “eaten to irritate the appetite and gullet,” such as cured ham, smoked tongue, pig’s feet, patés – particularly those with eggs and onions and especially blood sausages – are condemned outright. Even the few he admitted were less noxious – Venetian lucanica (luganega or linguiça), Milanese cervelat, and some French sausages – should be eaten only sparingly.” (Eating Right in the Renaissance, by Ken Albala, p 253).
Albala also notes that sausage might be served to peasants on days the lord provided the meals during the harvest season. Sausages, like the bread, cheese, and herring that might be served, were familiar staples served as a reward for service. Henisch, in her chapter on the cottage cook, points out that it was economical to use the never-ending soup pot to cook more than one item at the same time. “Room might be found for a side of bacon, a sausage in its own casing, or a container filled with eggs to be hard-boiled” (p. 40).
The most entertaining references to sausages are in Henisch’s chapter Fast Food and Fine Catering. Henisch quotes John Lydgate’s “The Siege of Thebes (c. 421), in which “Lydgate himself joins the party of pilgrims as they arrive at Canterbury and stop for the night at one of the leading inns. The proprietor bustles out to take orders for dinner, and tells Lydgate what is on the day’s bill of fare:
And ye shal han mad at your devis [you will have, made to order]
A gret puddyng or a rounde hagys,
A franchemole, a tansy or a froyse” (p. 80).
Puddyng, hangys and franchemole “are all savoury mixtures of ingredients, packed into the skin of an animal’s stomach and then simmered until cooked” (p. 80). She adds that “puddings of any kind were good standbys, because they were cooked in advance and then served on demand, either whole or by the slice (p. 81).
Sausages showed up as street snacks and in cookshops too. 16thC poet William Dunbar mentions “pudingis” for sale in the streets of Edinburgh in one of his poems. The puddings were savoury mixtures of oatmeal, onions and, with luck, a little meat, cooked in a skin, and the could be bought whole or by the slice (Henisch, p 75). William Fitz Stephen wrote before 1183 that “There is in London upon the river’s bank, amid the wine that is sold from the ships and wine-cellars, a public cookshop. There daily, according to the season, you may find viands, dishes, roast, fried and boiled, fish great and small, the coarser flesh for the poor, the more delicate for the rich … As Fitz Stephen makes clear, cookshops welcomed any paying customer, a feature which did not find favour with less indulgent critics. Fast food was always viewed with suspicion by those in authority, its reputation clouded by the undeniable fact that it was eaten not only by the deserving poor but by those on the look-out for a little fun as well as a little snack. It was enjoyed on the wing, at strange times and in strange places, where men and women could meet in dangerously unregulated settings. Fast food and fast women went hand in hand and, in the age-old way, delightful flirtations led to deplorable consequences.
A case in point is that of George Cely, a young bachelor who, as an English wool merchant, had to pay regular business visits to Calais. While far away from home base, he spent many happy hours in a favourite cookshop, where he found both the puddings and Margery, the girl who made them, much to his liking. The end result was not one but two babies for Margery, and a taxing amount of extra expense for George. In January 1482, a friend wrote a discreet note about the second pregnancy to George, who by then was safely back in England: ‘Where as we ate the good puddings, the woman of the house that made them, as I understand she is with child.’ François Villon knew all about the dangers and delights of such casual encounters, and listed ‘la gente Salcissiere’ (‘the charming Sausage-maker’) among the good-time girls in his own fifteenth-century Paris” (Henisch, pp 76-77).
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