Merguez Three Ways

My friend Jane came over to make sausages today. We decided to try two variations on the first recipe found here, plus the second recipe.

The first recipe calls for murri naqi, which is a medieval fermented barley paste. We used David Friedman’s recipe, found here, with a few changes. Because Jane is gluten-intolerant, we left out both the breadcrumbs and the wheat starch. I didn’t have anise, so we substituted fennel. I didn’t have carob or a substitute, so we just left it out.Quinces are out of season, so we used the equivalent weight of crab-apples instead. We decided to put in half the recommended amount of salt, as it seemed like too much (especially without the bread crumbs etc to bulk up the mixture).

Clockwise from top: crab-apples, nigella, walnuts, cilantro and mint (for the second recipe), celery seed, saffron, fennel seed (in the centre)

Our recipe for murri:

2/3 tsp nigella

1 1/2 oz crabapples, quartered and seeds removed

1/4 tsp saffron

3 Tbsp salt in 3 Tbsp honey

1/3 tsp celery seed

2 c water

1 1/3 tsp fennel

1/4 oz walnut

1 Tbsp lemon juice

We cooked the honey and salt in a saucepan, bringing it to a boil then turning off the heat three times; the mixture smelled scorched and was a dark caramel colour. We toasted the fennel and nigella in a frying pan, then ground it in a mortar with the celery seed and walnuts. Then we boiled all the ingredients except the lemon for about 2 hours, then squeezed the liquid out through a small colander and added the lemon juice. The result was a little over a cup of very salty but complex-flavoured murri.

While that was going on, we prepared the first variation of this recipe. Since murri provides the salt in the sausage, we decided to test the recipe using just plain salt.

Merguez first way (Mirkas):

1 lb lamb, of which about 1/3 was fat

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground coriander seed

1/4 tsp ground lavender

1/4 tsp cinnamon

We ground the lamb but chopped the fat into small chunks with a knife. Then we added the remaining ingredients, mixed them together and filled the sausage casings. (We forgot the pepper.) The sausage was quite tasty, and vaguely exotic compared to the northern European sausages I have been making up until now.

Merguez Second Way:

This recipe was identical to the first way, except we remembered to add 1/4 tsp pepper, skipped the salt and added 2 tsp of murri instead. This was divine! Our only disappointment was that we only managed to make six sausages. We have lots of murri left, and will be making this again as soon as we can acquire more lamb at a reasonable price.

Merguez Third Way (Mirkas with Fresh Cheese):

1 lb lamb (about 1/3 chopped fat and 2/3 ground meat)

1/2 c Bulgarian feta

1 extra-large egg

1/4 tsp pepper

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground mint leaves and their juice

1 tsp ground cilantro and its juice.

Mix everything together and stuff into casings.

This was our least favourite of the three. Next time, we would use only 1/8 tsp cloves, as it overwhelmed the other flavours. We would also use a smaller egg, as it was very liquid (though it should cook up just fine now that it is in a casing).

Here’s how everything looked at the end:

Jane with (l to r) Merguez with salt, Merguez with Cheese, and Merguez with murri

We didn’t make any of the vinegar and oil (optionally with the addition of cilantro and mint juice and mashed onion) sauces to accompany the merguez, though I will try to make some to take to the grand taste-testing in November.

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Decluttering my kitchen and garden

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My daughter is away visiting friends for a few days, so she has tasked me with her cleaning schedule. Bwahahahaha! That’s not likely to happen. I did, however, agree to do some decluttering. Clearly, the best way to do that is to start new projects right? I think so, especially since my mom is coming over to sew tomorrow, so I started some new sewing projects, too, instead of setting up current projects so we can work together. This post won’t be particularly medieval, as a result.

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First up, I started processing the woad from my garden. So far, I have a lovely pot of blue-green goop.

I was supposed to be following the instructions here (http://www.woad.org.uk/html/extraction.html) , but I completely forgot to strain out the leaves before running the liquid through the blender. I have strained out the tiny bits now, so hopefully I’ll be able to recover the blue woad without too much green.

At the same time (which might explain the woad mistake), I made a jar of wonderberry jam. Wonderberries self-seed in my garden, and so far this year I have gotten three jars.

I still need to make about 10 lb of crab-apple preserves, and clean yesterday’s haul of elderberries. It’s too hot to make elderberry pie, and I’m not fond enough of jelly to use the berries for that.

Then it will be back to my sewing. I have been getting inspired by Makery’s Refashioners 2015 challenge (http://www.makery.uk/). So far, I have redone two shirts. This one is a boring men’s Gap shirt. I removed the collar, shortened the sleeves, and recut the hem so the front is shorter than the back. Everything is bound with bias tape.

Now I’m cutting down a bunch of T-shirts. But the pants I’m supposed to be working on? Not so much. And we won’t even mention my tablet weaving project (I set it up but I’m not happy with the size of the band, so I’m going to simplify the design), or the two tunics I have started to cut out many times, etc. etc.

But I will clear a few things out – really! I have until Sunday. That’s hundreds of minutes.

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Chorizo

I love chorizo, both the Mexican and the Spanish style, so I have been frustrated that I couldn’t find a medieval recipe. Finally, I went back to my big stack of notes accumulated months ago, and discovered the recipe below, though without any notes of where I had found it. A bit of searching later, and I came up with http://larsdatter.com/manual.htm#chorizo for the English translation, as well as a link to the Spanish version.  More officially, this source is “Manual de mujeres en el cual se contienen muchas y diversas recetas muy buenas (Manual of Women in which is contained many and diverse very good recipes) (1500) Harris, Karen trans. Self-published.”

Carne de puerco magra y gorda picada, harina muy cernida, ajos mondados, clavos molidos, vino blanco, sal la que fuere menester. Amasarlo todo con el vino y después de masado, dejarlo en un vaso cubierto un día natural. Y después henchir las tripas de vaca o puerco, cual quisiéredes, de esta masa y ponerlas a secar al humo.

Minced lean and fat pork meat, well-sifted flour, peeled (cloves of) garlic, ground cloves, white wine, salt. Knead everything together with the wine and after kneading it, leave it in a covered vessel for one natural day. And then fill the intestines of a cow or pig, whichever you want, with this mixture and leave them to dry in smoke. (Manual de mujeres, 1500)

I used 1 kg pork shoulder, 1 Tbsp white flour, 6 cloves of garlic, 1/4 c white wine, 1/8 tsp ground cloves, 20 gr salt (about 1 Tbsp), and 3/4 tsp curing salt #2. The curing salt is modern, but since these sausages are to be cold smoked and then eaten without cooking, I decided in favour of food safety.

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The verdict? Okay, but I think I liked them better when I used a modern recipe and let them just hang for days, instead of smoking for a few hours. They didn’t have the fermented tang of the dry cured sausage. Also, I think a little more salt might have been nice (though more fermentation might have given the flavour I’m missing). I’ll try this recipe again when the weather is colder, and just hang to dry. Dry curing is definitely NOT something to try on a day like today, when it was above 30C, and felt like it was above 40C.

Also, this lady’s blog is pretty cool, even though she didn’t give the documentation for her version of medieval chorizo: http://www.medievalspanishchef.com/2010/10/afiler-de-cabeza-negra.html.

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Manuel de mujeres (yet another blood sausage recipe)

I swore I was done with blood sausage, but then I came across these while hunting for a chorizo recipe:

Manuel de mujeres (1500) http://larsdatter.com/manual.htm#chorizo

Receta para hacer morcillas finas

     Pan rallado, almendras cortadas, piñones, clavos y canela molido, yemas de huevos cocidas, manteca de puerco fresca, sal la que fuere menester, azúcar derretido en agua de olor. Todas estas cosas amasadas. Y hecha la masa, henchir las tripas -que sean de las delgadas de vaca- de esta masa. Y tableadas las tripas, picadas con un alfiler; y puesta una caldera de agua al fuego, cuando hierva meter las tripas horadadas dentro, y dejarlas hasta que se paren tiestas.

Recipe to make fine blood pudding (this is actually a white pudding recipe)
Grated bread, sliced almonds, pine nuts, cloves and ground cinnamon, cooked egg yolks, fresh lard, salt which is necessary, sugar dissolved in perfumed water. Knead all these things (together). And when the mixture is made, fill the guts – which are the thin ones of a cow – with this mixture. And cut up the guts, prick them with a pin; and put a pot of water on the fire, when it boils put the guts in it, and leave them until the sound of the cooking has stopped.

Receuta para hacer un obispo de puerco

     Dos libras de puerco que sea de lomo y haya estado un día en adobo con la tripa. Lavadas después y picadas con una docena de huevos cozidos y con una libra de manteca. Y después de picado, echallo en una almofía y juntar con ello una docena de huevos crudos, y cuarta y media de clavos, y canela molida, y un poco de pimienta, y encorporarlo todo muy bien. Y desque encorporado, y puesta la sal que fuere menester, henchir la tripa dello y poner a trechos las yemas de huevos cocidas que quisieren.

Recipe for a pork blood pudding (the literal translation is Recipe for a Pork Bishop)
Two pounds of pork that is from the back and that has been for one day in a marinade with the guts. Then wash (the pork) and cut it up with a dozen cooked eggs and with a pound of lard. And after cutting it, put it in a still (bowl?) and add with it a dozen raw eggs, and a cuarta and a half of cloves, and ground cinnamon, and a little pepper, and mix it well. And once it is mixed, and the salt which is necessary has been added, fill the guts with it and insert at intervals the cooked egg yolks that you desire.

I can see this one looking a bit like human figures, with egg yolk heads and sausage meat bodies.

Both these recipes are quite rich and use lots of eggs, I don’t think they will freeze very well. Therefore, I’ll save them for a day closer to when I will be presenting all my sausages. In the meantime, I give you a lovely Spanish sausage stuffer:

The bowl is found at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. An inscription in Spanish on the rim of this bowl cites the name of its owner and alludes to its function, making it one of the most interesting surviving examples of late Hispano-Moresque pottery: “Esperança de Tierça, wife of Mig[u]el de Navarro, [and] keeper of the tripes in the town of Muel. Year 1603.” Inside the bowl is the name “Juan Escribano,” surely the craftsman. Tripe is pig intestine used for the casing of sausage. The casing would be fitted over the spout and the meat mixture in the bowl forced into it. The population of Muel consisted mainly of “moriscos” (Spanish subjects of Moorish descent) who made their living as potters. The town’s lusterware production stopped almost completely when the “moriscos” were expelled a few years after this bowl was made.

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Franconian Sausage

Franconian sausage, one of the bratwursts claiming supremacy as the oldest German bratwurst, has similar flavouring to the Nurnburger bratwurst (also from Franconia, and another contender) and the characteristic flavour comes from marjoram. It is coarsely chopped. I was unable to find a period source, but did find this recipe:

Cut the neck and the belly of pork and grind it into a bowl. Add some herbs including Macys (flower of the nutmeg), cardamom, Marjoram, a good pinch of salt and pepper, and mix it all with your hands.

2. Then add two eggs and mix it again, some milk and mix it one last time.

3. Pull over the bowl with the casings made of pigs gut. Pick one out and find the end of the skin. Then, take a funnel and slip the casing over the end in one deft movement. Stuff the casing with the mixture, before tying it off to make a sausage.

4. Once all the sausages are ready, fry them in a little oil in a frying pan. Serve them with steaming sauerkraut, mustard and a good bottle of beer.

Recipe from Georg Scharf (Butcher – Fleischer Fachgeschaft, Bischberg) http://www.pilotguides.com/recipes/tv-shows-planet-food-germany-recipes-franconian-sausages-sauerkraut/

For this recipe, I used a piece of pork shoulder (about 2 1/2 lb), about 1/2 tsp mace, the ground seeds from one cardamom pod, 1 1/2 tsp marjoram, 1 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper, 1 jumbo egg and about 2 Tbsp milk.

Because of what I have been reading about Franconian sausage being one of the oldest known sausage types, and that it is a coarser sausage, I chopped all the meat with a knife. Otherwise, I followed the instructions exactly. I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to chop the pieces finely enough, but they look exactly like sausages I can buy commercially, and the flavour was quite nice. Franconian sausages are supposed to be very long and the seem to be quite thin. I struggled to make mine as long and thin as the images I had seen. Perhaps lamb casings would have worked better, despite their tendency to fall apart on me. However, I did experiment with under-filling the casings, and that seemed to give a reasonably good effect.

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Verjus

It’s apple season around here, and there are plenty of crab-apples free for the taking, so somehow a discussion of crab-apples turned into a plan to make verjus. Verjus, or verjuice, was an essential ingredient in European sauces in the middle ages. Though most commonly made of unripe grapes, crab-apples and other sour fruit were also used.

My friend Michelle, who gave me the apples, has previously made verjus in her kitchen aid. I decided it would be fun to try using mechanical crushers and juice extractors; luckily, my sister had these.

Step One: prop the antique apple crusher on two bar stools in the kitchen, with a large receptacle underneath, and fill the crusher with washed apples with leaves removed (stems too, if they come off easily).

Step two: using your mom and your daughter to help hold the crusher down, try desperately to turn the handle and send crushed bits of apple into the receptacle below, without spilling too much on the floor.

Step three: assemble the juicer and fill with crushed apples (translation – look up what all those little pieces that came with the juicer are for in a youtube video, search madly for some cheesecloth when you realize that the first instruction is to line the juicer with the stuff).

Step four: crank that puppy until your can’t go any further and you have a lovely bowl of juice. Be careful not to do your back an injury (same instruction as for step two). It turns out the juicer should have been bolted to something big and heavy, so Mom very helpfully held it steady and made sure the juice container didn’t fly across the room while I turned the crank.

 

Tadaa! I have about four cups of juice that will be transferred to bottles to sit on my counter for 2-3 days. After that, the juice can be refrigerated for several months, or frozen.

Then it was time for the clean-up. Remember that apple crusher with the big spikes? It’s a royal pain to clean because it’s too big to sit in my sink for rinsing, and the spikes are time consuming to wash with a cloth.  The medieval method, which appears to have used a pestle and then squeezing the squashed fruit through a cloth, would have been less efficient for juice capture, but far easier to clean up.

Fabrication du verjus BnF Latin 9333 fol. 83

 

 

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The French Cook – More Stuffed Things

7. Potage of a farced breast of Veal. Take a breast of Veal, open it at the nether end, make a farce with a little meat and suet, the crum of a loaf, and all kinds of good Hearbes, mince and season all; whiten this breast, and put in the pot with good broath; Seeth it with Capers, Succory or Herbes minced, stove your Bread, Garnish it if you will, and serve.

8. Potage of a Calfe’s head farced without bones. After it is well scalded, take up the skin thereof, seeth it, and when it is sodden, take out the bones, take out the brains and the eyes, for to set them in their place again; mince well the flesh with Beef-suet or Marrow, and raw yolkes of Eggs, for to thicken the farce, then set the brains and the eyes into their room again; When it is farced, sow it neatly up again, whiten it well in fresh water, and put it in the pot with good Broath; seeth it wll; and next, take some Calfe’s feet, and frie them into Ragoust, seeth them half in water, cleave them in the middle, and pass them in the pan with Butter or Lard, put them into your pot with some Capers; then stove your Bread, Garnish it with this head and feet with the Capers, and serve.

I’m afraid I can’t figure out how this works at all – I understand scalding and removing the skin, but how does one remove the bones once the meat is at least partly cooked? And where, exactly, does the stuffing go? The obvious place would have been where the brain was, but that gets stuffed back into the calf’s head. Perhaps the brain is what is mixed with the eggs and marrow to make the farce?

9. Potage of Lamb’s heads without bones farced. Do as with the Calfe’s head; after they are well scalded, take up the skin, seeth the, and when they are sodden, take the meat of them, and mince it with suet and Lard well seasoned according to your liking; Farce them with a piece of Liver, and of lights of Lamb, Beef-suet or Marrow, raw yolks of Eggs, parsley and fine Herbes, all well minced together, and whiten it, then put it in the pot with good Broth; seeth them well, and season them with fine Herbs; Stove your Bread, and Garnish it with the heads and Purtenances (inner organs, viscera), which you shall whiten if you will with yolks of Eggs allayed with Verjuice, and serve.

10. Potage of a joint o f Mutton farced. Take a joint or two of Mutton, take out the bones, and mince the flesh very small with suet and Lard, then farce the skin with it, and sow it up very neatly, so that the end of the knuckle be very clean, and all well seasoned with salt and spice according to your tast; put it in the pot, and seeth it well with a bundle of Herbes, Capers, and Turnips; Stove your bread, take up, and Garnish it with your Turnips, then serve.

11. Potage of Geese farced. After they are drest, take out the brisket, and farce them with what farce you will, then flowre them, and put them in the pot with good Broath; Stove your Bread and Garnish it with your Geese, with Pease, Pease-Broath, or what you will, and serve.

12. Potage of Partridges without bones, farced. Take out the brisket, and take some Veal or some Capon-flesh, mince it, and season it according to your liking with Salt and Spice, or fine Herbes; Farce your Partridges with it very neatly, put them in the pot with good Broath, and seeth them well with a bundle of herbes, stove your Bread, and Garnish it about the dish with Sparagus, and bottoms of Hartichoakes, then serve.

13. Potage of Turke farced. After it is well dressed, take out the brisket, and take some Veal and some Suet, which you shall mince very small; thicken your farce with Eggs, & mix with it some Beatilles (meatballs) or young Pigeons, raw yolks of Eggs, put it in the pot with good Broath, and seeth it well: put some Chestnuts in it, Mushrums, and Truffles; stove one loaf of Bread, and Garnish it with what is in your pot, then serve. For to make the bundle of Herbes, take Chibals. Parsley, and Thime, and tie them together.

 

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The Second Part of the Good Hus-Wives Jewell

This book was written by Thomas Dawson in 1597. My version was edited by Susan J. Evans (Falconwood Press, 1988).

I had overlooked the recipes for haggis (including a lenten haggis that is meat-free, but not exactly a hardship), as well as several puddings (including one that is cooked inside a carp that is boiled in a green broth). I realized my oversight when searching for a pancake recipe said to be in the first volume by this author.

To make a Haggas pudding (p 37). Take a peece of a Calves Chaldron (tripe) and perboile it, shred it so small as you can, then  take as much Beefe Sewet as your meate, shred likewise, and a good deale more of grated bread, put this together, and to them seven or eight yolkes of egs, and two or three whites, & a litle creame, three or fower spoonefull of rosewater, a little pepper, mace and nutmegs, and a good deale of suger, fill them and let them be sodden with a very soft fire, and shred also with a little Winter Savery, prsely and Time, and a little Penirial with your meat.

To make Hagges Puddings (p 37). Take the liver of a Hog and perboyle it, then stampe in water and straine it with thicke creame, and put therto eight or nine yolke4s of egges, and three or foure whites, and Hogges suet, small raisons, Cloves and Mace, pepper, slate, and a litle suger, and a goode deale of grated bread to make it thick, and let them seeth.

To make a lenthen Haggesse with poched egges (p 39). Take a Skillet of a pinte, and fill it half with vergious, and halfe with water, and then take Margerome, Winter-saverie, Peniroyall, mince (could this be mint?) , Time, of eche sixe crops (sprigs?), wash them, and take foure Egges, hard rosted, and shred them as fine as you can, & put the hearbes thus into the broth, then put a great nadfull of currants (presumably dried, since fresh currants would not be available during Lent), and the crummes of a quarter of a Manchet, and so let it seeth til it be thicke, then season it with Suger, Sinamon, Salt, and a good peece of Butter, and three or foure sponnefulles of Rosewater, then poch seaven Egges and lay them on sippets, and pour the Haggesse on them, with Sinamon and Sugar strewed on them.

Okay, technically, that one is a stretch as nothing gets stuffed, but this sweet, eggy dish is so delightfully in violation of the spirit of lenten deprivation that it needs to be shared.

To make Ising puddings (p 38). Take great Otemeale and pick it and let it soake in thick creame 3 howere (hours), then put therto yolkes of Egs, and some whites, pepper, and set them nod too full (ie stuff casings, but not too full), and seeth them a good while.

To make a Pudding (p 38). Take Parseley and Time, and chop it small, then take the kidney of Veale, and perboile it, and when it is perboyled, take all the fat of it, and lay it that it may coole, and when it is colde shred it like as you doo sewet for puddinges, then take marrow ande mince it by it self, then take grated bread and smal raisons the quantity of your stuffe, & dates minced small, then take the egges and roste them hard, and take the yolks of them and chop them small, and then take your stuffe afore and mingle altogether, and then take pepper, Cloves and Mace, Saffron, and salt, as much as you thinke by casting shal suffice, then take six Egs and breake them into a vessel whites and all, and put your dry stuffe into the same egges, and temper them all wel together, and so fill your haggesse or gut, and seeth it wel and it will be good.

To boyle a carpe in a greene broth, with a pudding in this bellie (p 43). Take the spawn of a carpe, and boile and crumble it as fine as you can, then take grated bread, smal raisons dates minced cinamon, suger, cloves, and Mace, and Pepper, and a little salte mingled altogeather, and straine it with three or foure yolkes of Egges, and one white, and put to the spawne, with a little creame and Rosewater, then take the carpe and put the pudding in the bellie, and seeth him in water and salt, and when he is almost boyled, take some of the spawne and of the best of the broth, and put it into a little pot with a little white wine, and a good peece of butter, and three or foure Onyons, whole Mace, whole Pepper, and small Raisons, and three or fower Dates, and when it is a good deale sodden, put in a good deale of seeded spinnage (this may refer to a particular variety), & strain it with three or fower yolks of Egges, and the Onyons that you put into the Broth with a little Vergious, and put it to your Broth: and if it be too sharpe put in a little Suger, and so laye your Carpe upon soppes, and poure the Broth upon it.

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40+ kinds of bratwurst

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bratwurst describes five varieties of bratwurst from Franconia (mostly in northern Bavaria, but culturally distinct), plus one each from Thuringia, northern Hessan and Swabia. However, it notes that there said to be over 40 kinds of bratwurst in Germany. In terms of medieval bratwurst varieties,

http://genussregion-oberfranken.de/spezialitaeten/staedte/122/oberes_maintal__coburger_land/335/coburger_bratwurst/details_38.htm notes that most Upper Franconian sausages are relatively thick and of medium length (15-20 mm in diameter, about 20 – 25 cm length). In Coburg the Bratwurstmaß is traditionally exactly 31 cm. However, they are significantly thinner than, for example Bamberg medium-coarse Bratwurst.

Though some are made with only selected pork belly and lean pork, in some regions, veal or beef is added. Depending on the region, spices varied too: some have marjoram, others only pepper and cumin, or a touch of garlic and lemon. The consistency of the sausage filling also has special cultural and historical role. Coarse sausage was offered mainly in the Protestant regions of Upper Franconia; the medium-coarse to fine the other hand came from the Catholic areas. For better bonding of the slightly crumbly sausage mass, some recipes add fresh eggs. The city of Coburgs claim to have made sausages in the 15th century according to this recipe (ie including eggs) and it was served to Martin Luther and the Elector of Saxony in 1530 when they was staying in Coburg during the Augsburg Reichstag during the negotiation of the Augsburg Confession.

The exact date of the first Coburger bratwurst is disputed but the oldest firm evidence comes from Coburg George Hospital from 1498. It said that every child (in the city?) and every Coburg (patient?) in the hospital were to receive two sausages from the last pigs slaughtered for Shrove Tuesday.

In 1623 Duke Casimir issued a taxation ordinance that the Coburg sausage could cost only 4 1/2 cents and had to weigh a pound for four pieces together. So it is no surprise that the citizens wanted Coburg to have a very accurate measure of their sausages. They found it, presented by none other than the city’s patron St. Mauritius, the standing on the pediment of the Town Hall facade above the clock, holding up his baton as Bratwurstmaß so that Coburg butchers could ensure their sausages were sufficiently large. Coburg citizens fondly named him the “Bratwurst Männle”. 350 years later, in 1982 this measure was precisely determined: a real Coburg must be 31 cm long (unprocessed).

 Now, after all this sausage trivia, you need a picture of the entrance to the Bratwurst Museum:

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Bratwurst

Unlike the history of haggis, which took some digging, it appears that there is lots of evidence for German bratwurst, and many opinions about who has the oldest evidence. Therefore, I am mostly going to piece together existing sources for this one, but starting with a picture from http://medievalcookery.blogspot.ca/2010/01/medieval-hot-dog-stand.html

La grigliata – The Grill

17th century German etching

Livio e Wilma Cerini di Castegnate Collection

On the website it’s described as “A rare representation of a women selling grilled vegetables outdoors.” A nice, simple picture. No surprises in terms of cooking utensils or methods. No big deal. I’m about to go on to the next image when I take a closer look at what’s in the customer’s hands. For all the world, it looks like a sausage in a bun. Maybe it’s just being served with a piece of bread? No, it definitely looks like the bread is cut down the middle, with the sausage between the halves.

Now the common belief is that sausage sellers first started putting sausages into split rolls sometime in the late 19th century, so I doubt my own eyes and post a link on a cooking mailing list. The quick consensus is that it does indeed look like a sausage in a bun. Then someone suggests that the caption on the etching might shed some light on things. My German is only good enough to know that it says something about “good fried sausages”, but a better translation is provided moments later. “Here, a decent sausage is roasted for not much money, with which hunger can be appeased but not thirst. This (thirst) can be appeased later as much as someone wants in a place where wine and beer is sold”. [translation courtesy of Emilio Szabo, via the SCA-Cooks mailing list]

A postmedieval document in Nürnberg with the recipe for Bratwurst is dated 1595 and was long believed to be the oldest recipe. But in 2000 an archivist, Peter Unger, found a bill for sausage skins to be delivered to the monastery of the maidens in Arnstadt dating to 1404.(2) So the Thüringer Rostbratwurst celebrated its 600th birthday in 2004. A legend says, that in the 7th century sorbish settlers entered Thüringen and caused the inhabitants to flee. On the road one of the refugees is said to have invented the Bratwurst.(3) The problem is, that nether the bill nor the legend give any clue to the recipe. The historian Michael Kirschlager claims to have found the oldest recipe in Thüringen. Much older are the records for stalls selling Bratwürste. In 1134 a kiosk is reported in Regensburg, selling Bratwurst to the construction workers of the cathedral and of the “Steinerne Brücke” (stone bridge). In 1146 the “Wurstkuchl” (sausage kitchen) was build near the salt house directly to the city wall.(4) In the 14th century the “Bratwurstglöcklein” (Glöcklein = little bell; named after a bell hanging from the wall of the chapel) was built in Nürnberg directly to the walls of the Moritz chapel. From the beginning it was quite famous and many people, including many celebrities, ate there. Its tradition lasted till the 20th century, when it was destroyed in WW II by bombs. But the original recipe of the “Glöcklein-Bratwurst” is still used in Nürnberg.(5)
There were and are still many different recipes for Bratwurst used in Germany, depending on the region or town you are in.

Čerpnjak Dorothea: Kleine Kulturgeschichte der Bratwurst. Eine Lieblingsspeise erobert die Welt. Leipzig 2005. (Cultural History of the Bratwurst. A favoured Dish conquers the World)

Dünnebier, Anna/ Paczensky, Gert von: Kulturgeschichte des Essens und Trinkens. München 1999. (Culutral History of Food and Drink)

1 Čerpnjak, p. 8-12; Dünnebier, p. 53, 54, 55

2 Čerpnjak, p. 28

3 Čerpnjak, p. 29

4 Čerpnjak, p. 30-31; Dünnebier, p. 126

5 Čerpnjak, p. 30-31

From the Bratwurst Museum in Thuringia, (http://www.bratwurstmuseum.de/geschichte.html) there is a similar timeline:

1. 1134 Builders of the Regensburg Cathedral strengthen in close proximity in a snack hut (possibly with bratwurst )
2. 1404 – Entry for the issue of 1 penny for intestines make to sausages in the provost’s account of the Arnstadt Virgin Monastery
3. Early 14th century . Nuremberg Bratwurstglöcklein built on the outer wall of the Santander Moritzkapelle
4. 1432 Fleischhauer order of the Weimar Fleischer ” something of a purity law for the roasting , liver and other sausages “
5. 1470 (1370) in Esslingen dictates an order that only pure pork may be used for the production of sausages
6. 1498 Coburg bratwurst is first mentioned in a bill of fare of George ‘s Hospital
7. 1554 – . 1592 Hans Stromer IV ( 1517-1592 ) eats behind bars in Nuremberg debtors’ prison , nearly 28,000 sausages
8. 1595 bratwurst recipe of the Nuremberg butchers’ guild
9. 1600/1601 Konigsberg giant sausage measuring 1,005 yards ( 670 m)
10. 02/07/1613 “S ( axes ) W ( eimarischen ) Product and order for butchers to Weimar , Jena and Buttstaedt ,” § 25 Bratwurst
11. 1669 Johann Jacob Christoffel of Grimmelshausen praises the “adventurous Simplicius Simplicissimus” Thuringian bratwurst
12. 1797 First printed recipe for Thuringian sausages in the ” Thuringian- Erfurtisches Cookbook

The discovery of the 1404 document sparked a debate about whose documentation for bratwurst was the oldest: (http://www.graf-von-katzenelnbogen.de/bratwurst.html)

In the financial statements of the Customs writer of St. Goar dating back to 1410 is a boatload of sausages mentioned (Value: 1 Gulden), which was shipped together with wine in Cologne. This is the clearest and earliest evidence for sausage, except for a document just six years older from Thuringia – the purchase of intestines to make sausages. This documents led to a bit of a dispute between Thuringians and Franks out (http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/geschichte-der-bratwurst-neue-historische-quelle-ruft-streit-zwischen-thueringern-und-franken-hervor/153812.htm) in July 2000:

The history of the sausage must probably be rewritten because the crispy grilled food is obviously older than thought. The sausage was mentioned in 1404 in Thuringia for the first time in a document, writes the “Thüringer Allgemeine” in its weekend edition. Previously, the oldest documents to mention sausage were from 1595 and 1613, attributed to the citizens of Nuremberg.

There is now a raging controversy between Thuringia and Franconia over the oldest sausage. “The Nuremberg Bratwurst has certainly been mentioned in 1300,” fought back the chairman of the Hotel and Restaurant Association for Middle Franconia, Werner Behringer, against this new disgrace. By 1313 in Nuremberg there was evidence of bratwurst in the mention of the bratwurst kitchen “to blue bell” near the Sebald Church, stressed Behringer. The oldest sausage kitchen in the world was definitely in Bavaria.

The 1432 document that was recently discovered has also sparked a debate, but this time it was over who had the oldest purity laws: butchers or brewers. Craig Whitlock wrote in the Washington post in December 2007 about this:

“It’s the German version of the chicken-or-the-egg conundrum: Which was regulated first, beer or bratwurst?

For centuries, brewers seemed to have history on their side. As evidence, they cited the world-renowned Reinheitsgebot, the Bavarian beer purity law of 1516, which stipulated barley, hops and water as the only permissible ingredients in the German national drink.

But thanks to Hubert Erzmann, a 75-year-old amateur historian, sausage lovers are crowing these days. Digging in the Weimar city archives, Erzmann unearthed a yellowed, handwritten parchment from 1432 that laid down the law regarding the production of Thuringian Rostbratwurst, perhaps the most popular variety of sausage in a country where wurst is worshiped as sacred grub.

The official document decreed that bratwurst from this corner of Thuringia, today a central German state, be made only from “pure, fresh” pork. Forbidden were beef, internal organs, parasites and anything rancid.

Although the regulations might not sound revolutionary, wurst aficionados have described the bratwurst purity law as a holy find, almost as significant to German culture as a Gutenberg Bible.

“As soon as I found it, I ran to the director of the archive and said, ‘Look! Look what I found!’ ” recalled Erzmann, who has haunted the archives for years in hopes of making such a discovery.

Food purity laws hold a revered place in the German soul. When the modern German nation was formed in 1871, Bavaria joined on condition that its beer purity rules be applied to the entire country. Even today, spoiled meat outbreaks are a national scandal and consumer protection is considered among the most important functions of government.

“The medieval regulations in Germany were incredibly modern,” said Michael Kirchschlager, an author who writes about Thuringian culture. “When you think of the Middle Ages, you think the food wasn’t necessarily that safe. But the hygiene in many ways was better than today.”

A replica of the bratwurst purity law soon will be enshrined at the German Bratwurst Museum ( http://www.bratwurstmuseum.net), located 24 miles away in Holzhausen, a village whose main intersection is marked by a giant sausage-and-bun sculpture.”

In an article  found at

http://www.kitchenproject.com/german/Bratwurst/history.htm, we learn that Thuringian sausage makers had to use only the purest, unspoiled meat and were threatened with a fine of 24 pfennigs — a day’s wages — if they did not, according to a spokesman for the German Bratwurst Museum said Wednesday.

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