An interesting article on the history of dried pasta

http://www.cliffordawright.com/history/mac_print.html

Now I need to go through all my cookbooks and dig out these recipes to try.

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Wurstbugel (Sausage measure): 100 Days of A&S Round 5, Day 24

http://objektkatalog.gnm.de/objekt/Z1

This is a Wurstbugel, or sausage measure, found in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nurnburg. My friend Aelfwyn spotted this and shared it because she knows how much I love sausage things. This was a completely new tool to me, and now I want one. The information below is my best effort to translate the information on the museum’s website. The link above provides all the original text, plus some detailed photos.

The body of the sausage measure is a brass plate with a rectangular basic shape. Towards one end, the plate widens slightly conically and merges into a relatively large and approximately circular eye. The other end kinks almost at right angles and ends in a tapered tip, the so-called degumming blade. However, the cutting edge is dull and serves to allow the careful removal of the intestinal mucus from the sausages to be filled with sausage meat. Both sides of the sausage measure are richly engraved and each has a wreath running along the edge. The engravings on one side also show the date “1601” as well as a pig running from the tip of the slicer blade toward the kink. In addition, on this side of the hanger, a broad, short sausage is notched on the edge of the eye and the initials “FW” are notched in the middle. The engravings on the other side show a cow walking from the top of the slicer blade towards a butcher. The craftsman depicted in elaborate clothing holds a meat cleaver in one hand and an hourglass in the other hand. He is undoubtedly a butcher. Along the edge of the eye, a narrower, longer sausage is scored on this side compared to the other side. This richly decorated sausage measure shows that even small or utilitarian tools or tools may be elaborately decorated. The very beautiful overall maintenance of the piece speaks in any case for a very careful handling of it.

The term” sausage measure “most likely comes from the museum. When purchasing the implement in the year 1884 “Wurstmaß” was used to designate it. The once common, but forgotten and therefore correct term is “sausage bar”. This is in various dictionaries of the 18./19. Century. In the German Dictionary of the Brothers Grimm of 1854 there are references to terms such as “wurstbogen” (15th century) and “sausage bar” (worsteboghel, 14th century). In other encyclopedias, the term “sausage horn” is mentioned, if the device was not made of brass, but made of horn. In Johann Heinrich Zedler’s Universal Lexicon (1732-1750) it says: “sausage bar is made of brass, horn or wood ring, with a small handle, through which sausages are made by filling pig-guts. The butchers used the eye (hole) of the sausage measure as a size guide; the intestine could thus be filled to a constant diameter, and the length could be measured against the length of the sausage measure. After filling, the sausage strand could be pulled through the eye and reshaped as necessary. The blade-like kink on the other end of the device served as a sort of degumming blade for removing the intestinal mucus. With the disappearance of the device from the artisanal production since about the middle of the 19th C, the actual name “Wurstbügel” fell into oblivion, the new term “Wurstmaß” prevailed. Sausage measures were not official equipment for determining sausage sizes; they were simply helpful guides. Sausages were always sold by weight, not shape, so the official control devices were calibrated scales.

One of the earliest images of a sausage measures comes from Die Hausbucher der Nurnburger Zwolfbruderstiftungen, a book that has images of craftsmen who were part of this organization from the late Middle Ages until the early 1800s. The image of Hans Layr, from 1586, him holding several sausage measures. (http://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/75-Amb-2-317b-46-r/data)

Literature:
Siuts, Hinrich: Rural and handicraft tools in Westphalia. The old agricultural and agricultural implements 1890-1930, Münster 1986, p. 191;

Schmidt, Leopold: The History of sausage measure, in: people and homeland (12) 1959, S. 4-5;

Rumpf, Karl: Of the guild system of the city Alsfeld with special consideration of the guild signs in the museum, in: Hessian homeland (2) 1958/59, P. 13-17, here: P. 17;

Pierer’s Universal Lexicon, Volume 19, Altenburg 1865, pp. 395-396; Müller, Wilhelm / Zarncke, Friedrich: Middle High German Dictionary, Leipzig 1854-1866, p. 387;

Adelung, Johann Christoph: Grammatical-critical dictionary of the High German dialect, Leipzig 1793-1801, pp. 1633-1634;

Zedler, Johann Gottfried: Great Universal Lexicon, 26th volume, 1749, p. 211. – Gazetteer (11/12) 1884, p. 141;

What is German? Questions about the self-image of a pondering nation. Accompanying volume to the exhibition in the Germanic National Museum, Nuremberg, June 2 to October 3, 2006. Nuremberg 2006, p. 248;

Always the right measure. From sausage size to environmental analysis. History and Activities of Environmental Analysis Nuremberg. Nuremberg 2007, p. 64;

Schindler, Thomas: From the sausage bar to the sausage measure. Interpretations and meanings in tool science, in: KulturGut (24) 2010, pp. 10-12 (https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/kulturgut/article/viewFile/18782/12593);

Bauriedel, Rüdiger: “Get the sausage measure” when slaughtering. Funny slaughterhouse custom with forgotten real background. In: Hummelgauer homeland messenger, Jg. 24, No. 91, March 2011, P. 2-8;

Schindler, Thomas: Tools of the Early Modern Period in the Germanic National Museum. Inventory catalog. Nuremberg 2013, p. 260, cat. No. 545;

Schindler, Thomas: Sausage bar of the type Einöhrbügel with degumming blade. In: Zünftig! Mysterious craft 1500-1800. Edited by Thomas Schindler, Anke Keller, Ralf Schürer. Exhibition cat. Germanic National Museum. Nuremberg 2013, p. 144, cat. No. 2.49.

 

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Upper Canada Village Medieval Days

A few weeks ago, I got to spend two days hanging out with some of my favourite people, doing one of my favourite things – Viking Age reenactment. I spent most of my time working on my fishing net because I had a good place to hang it and work with my face to visitors. I calculated that it took me about half an hour to do a row, including time for chatting.This project had been going on for years, but it is finally starting to look decent. I reached a point last weekend that I could sit while working. I have learned a lot from a simple project that is basically just repetition of the same knot.

I have changed the knot so that it doesn’t slip. I have learned that sometimes a double loop on the knot is needed so that the net will be sturdier. Not being an actual fisher, it took me a while to figure out that my mesh actually has to be the right size to catch a particular fish. I have done work on the net now that I am comfortable working without a gauge to ensure each loop is the same size. I have gotten pretty good at working both from left to right and from right to left, so I don’t need to switch the net around or work in a place where I can have access to both sides of the net. My recollection of traditional nets is that they were often made or repaired while hung against something like a fence, so mastering this skill was important. Finally, I have timed myself making a single row, so I can now calculate how many hours of work will have gone into the net when it is complete. I still need to improve my repair skills, as there are lots of errors at the beginning where I messed up which previous loop I should have netted into, and then couldn’t figure out how to fix my mistake.

I spent time researching how nets were used during the Viking Age and before. The reality is that huge nets don’t make much sense because they are hard to haul into a boat. However, it appears the Vikings did do some netting from boats because remains of net, sinkers and floats exist. They also used weirs and probably netted in streams as well. My net would probably do quite nicely during salmon spawning season in the little stream that runs through l’Anse aux Meadows, right beside the original forge site.

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