Category Archives: Food, Drink, and Diet

The Biggest Sausage in Children’s Literature

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Overindulgence doesn’t end with the 12th day of Christmas, it wraps up with the obligatory spread on Super Bowl Sunday.   To usher out the holiday season, we offer up a seasonal story with a recipe.

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procession-sausage-hhheatingtogethrtsizeandweight2335477year223344We can’t vouch for the veracity of The Wonderful History of the Great Sausage (New York: James Miller, ca. 1880).  But it seems likely that it was translated from an illustrated German-language children’s book or Die Fliegende Blatter, like Schwind’s “Trials of Sir Winter” featured in the previous post.   And it is our considered opinion that the charcuterie in the story must have been a hard smoked sausage if it required a saw to slice.

A recipe from an extremely tattered 1967 printing of The Joy of Cooking follows, just in case one of our loyal followers will be inspired to substitute a Wunderwurst for Buffalo wings at their spread for Super Bowl XLIX…   The recipe will have to be multiplied many times to produce a 1005-yard sausage weighing eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty eight pound, but maybe someone from the world of competitive sausage making can be enlisted to lend a hand.  This is surely a manageable project in comparison to surpassing the  the longest sausage on record (five miles long but of ordinary girth).

Hard Sausage

Have ready: 2 ½ lbs of peeled potatoes. Cook 12 minutes, drain, and cool overnight covered.

Grind three times: 2 ½ lbs of top round of beef, 2 ½ lbs of lean pork, and 2 ½ lbs of small-diced pork fat.  Mix with 2 tablespoons of salt, 1 tsp saltpeter, and 2 teaspoons of coarsely ground pepper.

Grind the cooked potatoes once and add to the meat.  Work together until well mixed.  Put into sausage casing and smoke. After smoking, hang in a cool dry place, about 1 to 2 months to cure.

and-it-was,-pictureThanks to the remote researcher who sent the query that caused us to stumble across this tale and “Sir Winter” (January 30 2014 post) in the Cotsen Collection, both of which seemed too good to keep to ourselves.

B. C. Faust’s Catechism of Health (1794): “Children, Brandy Is a Bad Liquor!”

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Catechism of Health

Catechism of Health. London: C. Dilly, 1794. (Cotsen 153738)

In 1794 Bernard Christian Faust (1755-1842), the court physician in the German principality of Schaumberg-Lippe, published  a book designed to teach children the principles of healthy living.  Its title was Gesundheits Katechismus zu Gebrauche in den Schulen und beym häuslichen Unterrichte.  The same year it was translated into English by John Henry Basse under the title A Catechism of Health.  A Dublin edition also came out in 1794.  An Edinburgh edition was issued in 1797 with a commendation by the eminent physician James Gregory as the best extant popular work of medicine he had seen.   The translation also quickly found a receptive public in America.

Cotsen has just acquired a copy of the first English translation.  It is illustrated with the frontispiece of a boy wearing what looks like a long night shirt.  A garment like this, Faust contended, was less confining and better for growing bodies than the usual corseted bodice and skirts.  He claimed that “The body will become healthier, stronger, taller, and more beautiful; children will learn the best and most graceful attitudes; and will feel themselves very well and happy in this simple and free garment.”

frontispiece of a boy wearing what looks like a long night shirt

Faust had equally strong opinions about what children should eat and drink.  Or not drink. Notice that Faust drops the question-and-answer format the better to deliver a lecture to children about the dangers of consuming strong spirits.  His vehemence on the subject of alcohol makes one wonder just  how widespread underage drinking was during the late Enlightenment…

Catechism of Health excerptCatechism of Health excerptHere is an excerpt from the section on brandy:

Some of Faust’s other recommendations seem downright peculiar today.  For example, he did not consider potatoes nutritious, cautioning his readers that “when eaten too often, or immoderately, prove hurtful to health, and to the mental faculties.” But undoubtedly plenty of advice in twenty-first century books on childcare and parenting that will strike later generations as just as ill-informed or quixotic!

Catechism of Health excerpt