Mingle in the Mincing Machine

Somewhere in the middle of my very long list of ‘things it might be fun to do if I can ever find the time’ is the idea of writing an article, or at least do some thorough research, on the subject of ancient sausage-making (both cooked and fermented), if not curing and brining more generally. I can’t decide if it’s a character flaw, or just a predictable habit, that I generally feel an urge to ‘academise’ my hobbies; my bee-keeping phase led to what’s still one of my favourite publications, I have a half-finished piece on reading Roman agriculture through the principles of organic growing… It’s a fairly predictable but effective move: compare what we know of ancient practices with modern scientific understanding and/or principles, as a way of opening up questions – not least, on occasion, wondering about how on earth the Romans could have kept bees for centuries and still believed that one could gather a new swarm from a dead ox…

With sausages, one of the key questions is how (or how far) the ancients developed more or less effective, non-lethal production methods in the absence of any concept of microbial contamination. If nothing else, a bit of research would put me in a stronger position vis-à-vis broad and unreferenced historical assertions in some of my charcuterie books, where at the moment I’m reacting with purely instinctive annoyance. For example, in the introduction to John Kowalski’s well-regraded The Art of Charcuterie (2011):

The trade of charcutier goes back at least as far as classical Rome. In such a large town, slaughterhouses, butchers, and cooked-meat shops were well-organised to safeguard public health.

Harrumph. First sentence seems unfair to Greece (see e.g. the sausage-seller in Aristophanes’ Knights), though Kowalski may be using charcutier in a very narrow sense and thinking just of the solid material evidence for brined pork shoulders being shipped down to Rome from northern Italy. Second sentence… well, in the absence of any detail, it’s hard to be sure; perhaps this is just saying that we know different Latin words for slaughterhouse, butcher and cooked-meat shops, and could deduce from this that there was (at least some of the time) functional differentiation and specialisation. But the way it’s framed suggests that, firstly, this was absolutely standard; secondly, this was officially enforced (“well-organised”); and thirdly, this was done on public health grounds.

The emphasis throughout Kowalski’s book is on the need for obsessive hygiene and careful separation of raw, cooked and processed meats – understandably, given the major risks involved – and the underlying tendency of his introduction is to sketch not just the historical roots of charcuterie but also the development of health and hygiene principles. The implication – echoing some very conventional tropes about Roman urbanism, fresh running water, clean streets etc. – is that the Romans attained a high level of awareness and good practice that was then ignored or forgotten in the Middle Ages and only recovered with the advent of modern scientific analysis.

My instinctive reaction is to start yelling at the book: that’s not how it was! Ancient sausage-making, one imagines, was more in the tradition of Terry Pratchett’s CMOT Dibbler; if (big if) slaughterhouses were banished to the outskirts, that’s about practicality and aesthetics not public health; if butchers, cooked-meat sellers, preservers of meat products etc were separate enterprises, that reflects the benefits of specialisation within a large enough market, not fear of cross-contamination. But I have to admit that it’s a long time since I read the relevant bits of Roman law, and that there’s a lot of research to be done before I can get annoyed on a solid evidence base.

In the meantime, there’s a piece I want to write on the emergence of the musical trio in classical antiquity, as a kind of proto-jazz…