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Ham Sausages, Smoked, German
Take five pounds of lean pork, minced as finely as possible. Mix with it a pound of fat, also minced, but not quite so small, and season it with half an ounce of pepper, the eighth of an ounce of saltpetre, and three ounces of salt. Add the seasoning gradually, while the meat is being chopped, and moisten with a quarter of a pint of claret or Burgundy. Let the meat stand for six or eight hours in a cool place. Fill the skins, properly prepared, as tightly as possible, pressing the meat down, and not leaving any portion of space unoccupied. To ensure this, they should be left for some hours, and then pressed down again. Wind a piece of new tape round them backwards and forwards once, tie it at the end, and hang the sausages in cool smoke for twelve days. They should be from ten to twenty inches in length. They are usually eaten raw, after being kept about a month; but, if it is preferred, they may be simmered gently in water for an hour either before or after smoking, but they must not quite boil. Time, two or three days to prepare. Probable cost, 1s. 4d. per pound.
This is a raw, cold-smoked, air-dried fermented sausage made without any of the controls that make such products safe. The instructions cannot be followed as given.
- Eaten raw, never heatedThe sausage is cured, cold-smoked and then eaten uncooked after about a month. Nothing in the process brings the pork to a temperature that kills Trichinella, Salmonella or E. coli; safety depends entirely on salt concentration, acidity, water loss and temperature, none of which is specified or measured here.
- The saltpetre is out of rangeThe saltpetre is used alone -- An eighth of an ounce of saltpetre in six pounds of meat works out to roughly 1,300 parts per million potassium nitrate, within the range still permitted for dry-cured products, but it is the only cure given. Nitrate only becomes protective nitrite through bacterial action that this recipe neither introduces nor controls.
- Botulism in a sealed casingA tightly stuffed casing with "no portion of space unoccupied" is exactly the oxygen-free environment Clostridium botulinum requires. Commercial dry sausage relies on a defined nitrite level plus a measured drop in pH and water activity within a set time to prevent toxin formation. None of those numbers exist here.
- "Cool smoke" is undefinedTwelve days of cold smoking holds the meat at temperatures where pathogens can grow, and the text gives no temperature at all. A modern smoker or garage will not reliably reproduce the conditions assumed here.
- No starter cultureTraditional raw sausage depended on whatever lactic bacteria happened to be present in the meat, the room and the equipment. Present-day dry-cured sausage uses a measured starter culture so that acidification is predictable rather than a gamble against spoilage organisms.
- The optional simmer does not fix itThe optional simmer is not a controlled step -- The recipe gives no temperature or verification for simmering "gently" for an hour without boiling, and it allows the simmer before smoking, which leaves the sausage hanging for a further twelve days afterwards; in that placement it does not make the finished sausage safe.
- If you want to make dry sausageUse a current recipe from a source that specifies cure quantities in grams per kilogram, a named starter culture, and target pH and weight-loss figures. Read this entry as a document rather than a set of instructions.
This entry belongs to the family of German and Austrian raw smoked sausages -- the Rohwurst group that includes Mettwurst and the various cold-smoked Landjäger and Cervelat types -- where the meat is cured, stuffed, smoked cold and then hung until it dries and sours enough to keep. The wine in the mix and the new tape wound around each length are both period details. The instruction to fill the skins, leave them for some hours and press the meat down again reflects a genuine technical concern, since air pockets are where such a sausage goes wrong. What the entry conspicuously lacks is any temperature at all.