www.sausagemaking.org

There is a small local middle age marked each year where a buddy and I have considered to make a batch of sausages and heat (grill) onsite. This is for fun, but I would like to go as authentic as possible.

What I would like input with:

Recipe as close as possible to an original middle age recipe. I am thinking pig intestines and fairly large (as in 150 grams each).

Ideas on how to serve them. I am considering some sort of leaf instead of paper or cardboard plate. Normal plates isnt really an option.

Also what to serve with it: Ketchup wasnt invented and it doesnt look like mustard was used for sausages back them according to Wikipedia. I am considering making it anyway, but any ideas if anything else was served with sausages back then?

Please share any thoughts..

Ok, here are some thoughts. Nothing scientific.

I think their sausages basically were made and stuffed just like the ones we make today (serious sausagemakers that is). Of course, there were no grinders back then.

They didn't have any spices from outside Europe though, so forget about pepper, nutmeg, chili etc. You should look for native spices from Northern Europe. I can think of mustard seed, thyme, caraway and marjoram which also go well in sausages. They didn't have cure (nitrite) back then, but I'd recommend that anyway.

I know that they used a combined air-drying/cold-smoking process (they hung the sausages in the ceiling just where the smoke outlet was).

Why not serve them on a piece of untreated wood? If you use leaves (which certainly is more practical), make sure they are not poisonous and don't give taste to the sausages!

To serve with them? Why not freshly grated horseradish? That was just about the only spicy thing that existed on Scandinavian tables back then. BTW, we serve sausage with horseradish a lot here in Sweden even today.

As said, just some thoughts.

Thanks for your comments.. I hope someone at this forum has a ready made recipe from the period. No question about that many of the spices we know today should not be in them. I will however play it safe (and follow any health code rules and probably by including things nike nitrite).

Untreated wood: I was thinking about that earlier, but just of my head it seems more expensive and creates more garbage - if somebody throw a leave in the ground it will dissolve quite quickly compared to a piece of wood. If using a leaf I would use something eatable like a kind of salat or cabbage. I don't think the sausage would take any taste from it?

Horseradish: Never heard of it. I will see if the local vegetable shop has any and experiment with it.

Thanks for your ideas and comments..

What are you refering to when you say "a ready made recipe from the period" or "Recipe as close as possible to an original middle age recipe"?

In the Middle Ages they didn't make drawings of ships, buildings or even cathedrals! I seriously doubt that anyone put a sausage recipe on print!

grisell wrote:What are you refering to when you say "a ready made recipe from the period" or "Recipe as close as possible to an original middle age recipe"?

In the Middle Ages they didn't make drawings of ships, buildings or even cathedrals! I seriously doubt that anyone put a sausage recipe on print!

I have seen TV programs about the menus they served at court where they showed very detailed records about what and how they served it - so I hoped simular existed for other types of food like sausages.

One thing I always enjoy when I buy food (besides quality and taste) is a "story" about the product. It is probably silly, but I think a story about where the recipe is from and who ate this would be good to have on a marked like this.

Since yesterday I have found a recipe from the time of the Tudors:

Tudor Food Recipe - Sausages Recipe

To make the Sausages
To make the best Sausages that ever was eat. Take a leg of young Pork, and cut of all the lean, and shred it very small, but leave none of the strings or skins amongst it, then take two pound of Beef Suet, and shred it small, then take two handfuls of red Sage, a little Pepper and Salt, and Nutmeg, and a small piece of an Onion, chop them altogether with the flesh and Suet; if it is small enough, put the yolk of two or three Eggs and mix altogether, and make it up in a Past if you will use it, roul out as many pieces as you please in the form of an ordinary Sausage, and so fry them, this Past will keep a fortnight upon occasion.

( http://www.the-tudors.org.uk/sausages-recipe.htm )

I think I'll give them a try this weekend and see what I'll come up with..

Sorry, I misunderstood you. I thought you were looking for an exact recipe from the Middle Ages; something I doubt that it exists.

Anyway, the 'recipe' and link you quote is really interesting. But you mentioned the Middle Ages, and that book from 1658 is well beyond the Middle Ages. You can also read that the recipe contains pepper and nutmeg, spices that were unknown in Europe before the Portuguese started the trade with the Far East in the 15th Century. Actually, it was the discovery of America and the Portugese trade in the 15th Century that marked the end of the Middle Ages and the start of the Renaissance.

History lessons aside, I'm quite certain that sausages had been made the same way for centuries even back then, except for the oriental spices. It's interesting to see that the 'recipe' you quote is - as I expected - identical to how we make fresh sausages today. The recipe is actually very similar to German bratwurst although it seldom contains beef. The spices are about the same.

The dull conclusion (for you, I mean, who are looking for something special) would then be that probably there was very little difference in taste from today's sausages and that no-one would probably notice any difference between sausages of today and sausages from a 500 year old recipe.

hedberg wrote:There is a small local middle age marked each year where a buddy and I have considered to make a batch of sausages and heat (grill) onsite. This is for fun, but I would like to go as authentic as possible.

What I would like input with:

Recipe as close as possible to an original middle age recipe. I am thinking pig intestines and fairly large (as in 150 grams each).

Ideas on how to serve them. I am considering some sort of leaf instead of paper or cardboard plate. Normal plates isnt really an option.

Also what to serve with it: Ketchup wasnt invented and it doesnt look like mustard was used for sausages back them according to Wikipedia. I am considering making it anyway, but any ideas if anything else was served with sausages back then?

Please share any thoughts..

Speaking as a food historian specializing in medieval western European cuisine, I think I can help you out. I've retrieved some of my class notes from a class I taught on medieval sausages and sausagemaking a few years ago. I'll post recipes separately, mostly from the mid-14th to mid-16th centuries, from English, French, German, Italian, and Catalan-Italian sources, however you can reasonably assume that many of these recipes pre-date the cookery manuscripts in which they were found. Some are cased and some are not. You may want to consider uncased sausage, floured and pan-fried, as a simple alternative to casing, but that's up to you. Certainly, cased sausages of 150g are not unreasonable for modern serving size, though a little on the large side for most medieval service.

For serving them, if you want something entirely biodegradeable, consider the very medieval option of serving them on a slab of whole wheat or barley bread. Bread-as-plate, or bread trenchers, were common late into period. They soaked up sauces and juices and left little to clean up. Very practical. Inexpensive, coarse wheat bread was generally used as trenchers.

I wouldn't put lots of faith in Wikipedia. I've got medieval recipes for mustard and recommendations on their use with meats and fish dating back to at least 1324 and likely earlier than that. Take some mustard flour, like Coleman's, and moisten it with some meat broth (chicken broth is particularly good), wine or pale ale, and optionally sweeten with just a touch of honey. Use on all manner of meat and firm-fleshed fish. No reason not to serve hot mustard on the side with your sausages.

The meat was often minced with a pair of hefty knives called gavinets. There is an illustration of mince being made in the Luttrell Psalter.

Hope this helps. Recipes to follow.

grisell wrote:...They didn't have cure (nitrite) back then, but I'd recommend that anyway...

While they certainly didn't have purpose manufactured nitrite curing salts, nitrites were present in varying concentrations in mined salt throughout medieval western Europe, notably in mined salt from Germany, Italy, Spain, and England, but also from other countries, as well. So, although they may not have been aware of why, their sausagemaking did benefit to varying degrees from the nitrites in the salt they used. There's no reason not to use nitrite salts in your medieval recipes.

Thanks for posting all of those fascinating sausage recipes. They didn't hold back on the salt did they.

vagreys: Did they use Oriental spices in 14th century England? They must have cost a fortune and not been accessible to everyone.

Vagreys, Thanks for the recipes.. I have tried to read a couple of them and they look facinating. I am really looking forward to try some of them out. I will probably need help with the one in "old english"

Also - Great idea with bread as a plate.. I am thinking something in the style of a pita - as in flat and round using wholegrain.

I can see they allready exists in a more modern version

The bread must be sourdough, though, if you want to keep it 'authentic'.

NCPaul wrote:Thanks for posting all of those fascinating sausage recipes. They didn't hold back on the salt did they.

Nope. In fact, some of the Italian sausages called for 10% salt by weight of the meat block! These were cooking sausages, however, and were meant to be placed in pottage and used to season and flavor (and provide a little meat) for an entire, long-cooking dish. Clearly, some of the recipes were assumed to be dry sausages, though that isn't spelled out - more like salume. The fresh sausages I've found that had weights in the recipes worked out to 1.5-3% MB, so about the same as modern tastes.

grisell wrote:vagreys: Did they use Oriental spices in 14th century England? They must have cost a fortune and not been accessible to everyone.

Spice trade in England is a fascinating subject, involving fraud and swindling by the Venetian merchants, national politics and preferred countries of trade, trade guilds, etc. Only the wealthy could afford spices in quantity, but there were merchants who made powders like the medieval blends I posted, last night, and people who couldn't afford to maintain a spice box could save to buy a little spice blend for a special occasion. At one point, in the Cinqueport trade unions, a journeyman in the Pepperers Guild was paid an annual salary that included a half-pound of pepper per year.

Evidence from Viking digs throughout northern Europe indicate that the Vikings who traded along the Volga had access to the spice trade routes, and both Asian and Eastern Mediterranean spices are found in the digs, going back to the 10th century, though in very small amounts. Spices like cinnamon, cassia, nutmeg, mace, ginger, galingale, long pepper, cubebs, black pepper, and grains of paradise were available throughout western Europe, from the early Middle Ages, if one had the money. Recorded recipes indicate the spices were there, and Viking digs indicate with hard evidence that they were even available in early northern Europe.

I'm glad you confirmed that oriental spices certainly were available (for the rich) in the middle ages. When I read André suggesting that (for example) pepper wasn't available, my eyebrows lifted quite high! I've seen transcriptions of recipes from the middle ages that used a surprising amount of spices, far more than we'd use today for example.

Try this:-

Spiced Fish - England, 1378

british, fish, main dish, medieval

1 1/2 lb pike/ other firm white fish cut into 4 or 5 chunks
2 tablespoon flour
4 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup honey
3/4 cup vinegar
1 small onion; chopped
3 cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground mace
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

"Egardusye"

For to make egardusye: Tak Lucys or Tenches and hack them small in gobbets and fry them in oil de olive and seeth nym
vinegar and the third part of sugar and minced onions small and boil altogether and cast therein cloves, maces, & quibibs and serve it
forth.

Dust the fish chunks with flour. Fry in the olive oil until crisp and light brown. Put the fish pieces into a 4-pint (2 1/2 cup)
saucepan. Cover with the honey and vinegar, chopped onion, cloves, mace, and pepper. Simmer until the fish is tender. Serve over boiled
rice.

From _The Forme of Cury_ , 1378