This week marks the start of British Sausage week starting on 31 October and with the sausage being a staple on bonfire night the Glamorgan Archive team were interested to find if they had any historical memorabilia relating to the humble sausage.
Glamorgan lays claim to having its own sausage, the vegetarian ‘Glamorgan Sausage’, made using local Caerphilly cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs. However the recipe discovered at the Glamorgan Archives is anything but vegetarian.
The documents titled ‘To make sausages’ found in a notebook from 1795-1813 would perhaps be more to the taste of meat eaters as it required a pound of lean pork and the same amount of ‘fatt’. This was to be mixed in a marble morter and seasoned with salt, cloves, mace, pepper, ginger and a ‘little sage’. The mixture was bound together with 4 egg yolks and 1 egg white and rolled up ‘in what form you please’.
The recipe is found in a notebook belonging to John Perkins, a gentleman farmer, of Ty-draw, Llantrithyd in the Vale of Glamorgan. He used the notebook to record the hiring of servants, payment of taxes, deliveries to mills, as well as some interesting medicinal and culinary recipes, including ‘to make sauce to keep’, ‘to make green pease soup’, ‘to cure corns’ and ‘for the ague’.
Glamorgan Archives, located in Leckwith, Cardiff, serves the authorities of Cardiff, Bridgend, Caerphilly, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taff and the Vale of Glamorgan. It collects preserves and makes available to the public documents from the area dating from the 12th to the 21st Centuries. Over 8km of documents are held in the strongrooms of its purpose-built facility which opened in January 2010.
Executive Member for Sport, Culture and Leisure, Cllr Nigel Howells, said: “I’m always amazed by what the team discover in the archives. These historical documents give a fantastic insight into how are fore fathers behaved, although I don’t think I will be trying out the recipe anytime soon!”
For more information go to www.glamro.gov.uk
