History of sausage production

From the earliest times up to the beginning of recorded history, man has probably prepared some type of meat product comparable to sausage.

Sausage has been an age long method of preservation as recorded by the primitive man, the ancient Egyptians and American Indians. The word ‘sausage’ has been described as originating from the Latin word ‘salsus’, which means salted. This would imply that sausage processing, in the form of adding salt to meat, existed at least several hundred years bc.

Homer who lived about the 9th or 8th century BC gives in detail the slaughter of a heifer as part of a religious ceremony. The collection of the blood from the animal and the manner of slicing and roasting the meat reflects the importance the Greeks placed on animal products as food.

In Odyssey (an epic poem in 24 books), it was saying that a favorite food of the Greeks. Roman festive occasions were considered incomplete without it.

In the tomb of Rameses III, a painting depicts the manner in which the Egyptians prepared their food. detail and is not too different in appearance from the methods used in the 1920's in the U.S. Rameses III was the second Pharaoh of the Twentieth Dynasty in Ancient Egypt.

Sausage making evolved as an effort to economize and preserve meat that could not be consumed fresh at slaughter. This practice could be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who made sausages which were usually plain and unspiced.

Apicuis in his Roman Cookery the oldest known cookbook describes puddings, loaves, and molded sausage like products. This Roman cookery thought to have been compiled in the 1st century AD.

Dr. E. N. Horsford in his report to US Army on the Army Ration of 1864, he mentioned that the Germans were quite skilled in sausage preparation and utilized all of the edible components of the animal.

He listed the necessary equipment for sausage manufacture and suggested means of making cloth casings coated with gelatin when other sources were not available.

Early sausage makers found that a wide range of raw ingredients could be used. The primary ingredients of sausage were the parts of the animal carcasses that could not be used in other ways.

In Europe, dry sausage was largely developed in southern Europe where such products are unlikely to spoil in the warm climate. On the other hand, northern Europe gave rise to cooked sausage where a cold climate permitted longer storage.
History of sausage production

History of wheat flour milling

Domestic cultivation of wheat has been documented at least since 9000 BC. The popularity of wheat has to do with its high content of gluten, which helps bread rise and is responsible for its elastic texture.

The first mills were either of the mortar and pestle type. The grain was place in a large saucer-shaped stone and a smaller rounded stone was used to crush it.

Or the saddlestone or metate which held the grain in a wide, shallow concavity in a flat or slanted stone where it was rubbed with a more or less cylindrical stone.

These primitive implements were followed by the quern, well known from early dynastic Egypt inward and consisting of a circular upper stone turned by hand power to animal power on a stationary lower stone.

Sometimes between 6000 and 5000 BC breads were made form wheat flours in both Egypt and Mesopotamia.

Romans adopted many of the milling and baking practices from Egypt. It appears that the Romans were the first people to develop a large mill that could be driven by a horse or a donkey.

Gristmills, such as the one at Jamestown in 1621, ground corn and wheat for meal and flour helping to feed the colonist and making the millers key local figures.

New York City became the first commercial center for wheat milling. Exporting wheat flour appears to have begun in the 1648s and the need for some form of inspection to ensure and maintain a good reputation was recognized by 1674.
History of wheat flour milling

History of baking leavened bread

The grain paste left to stand for a time sooner or later collects wild yeasts form air, and begins to ferment. This was the beginning of leavened bread, although for most of human history the presence of yeast was mostly accidental.

It is believed that the use of sourdough in bread leavening production developed in ancient Egypt in approximately 3000 BC and from there spread gradually to Europe, throughout ancient Greece and the Roam Empire until the present.

The ancient Egyptians developed the art of cooking leavened doughs in molds the first loaf pans. The molds were heated and then filled with dough, covered and stacked in a heated chamber. These were perhaps the first mass-produced breads.

During the Barbarian migration period in Europe, bread was not the primary food of the Barbarians and industry bread manufacturing disappeared.

The technology of sourdough bread appeared in the monasteries until the twelfth century when the profession of baker reappeared in France.

An important innovation in Roman baking was introduced by the Gauls, a European people who had been conquered by the Romans. They discovered that adding the froth from beer to bread dough made especially light, well leavened bread. This is the beginning of the use of a controlled yeast source for making bread doughs.

Since the nineteenth century, baker’s yeast has almost completely replaced sourdough in the leavening of bread.
History of baking leavened bread

Ancient history of roasting

Roasting has been a method of cooking meat since prehistoric times. The simplest and oldest method is spit-roasting, in which the meat is impaled on a spike made of wood or metal and then cooked over a fire.

The spit is kept turning so that no section of the meat is exposed to the high heat for long.

The Celtic method was to spit-roast over an open fire on a hearth in the middle of the house, where a bar was set between two andirons.

Large cuts of meat, even whole animas can be cooked this way, getting thoroughly browned without being overcooked.

The Egyptians thrust a bar lengthways through a bird or a fish and a servant held this over a fire. In one tomb illustration a servant is known waving a fan over a bird, either to keep away flies or to act as a bellows.

The Greeks and Roman used spit-roasting for small game, fish, and pieces of meat, but preferred to roast their meat and fish in iron pans or clay pots, which were placed directly on the fire or on a gridiron set over glowing charcoal. It is a favorite method among the Romans, but the flare-ups when grease hit the open coals caused fire.

The Emperor Augustus created a corps of watchmen-firefighters to patrol the city watching for kitchen fires, and Roman kitchens were usually placed in separate buildings, so if a fire start, the principle structure would not burn down.
Ancient history of roasting