These are made from the best kind of tender meat, the Moerbraten that would otherwise go to roasting. Clearly, a luxury.
Sausages of tender, roasting-grade venison (Hirschmoerbraten)
1 You chop tender, roasting-grade venison (Hirschmoerbraten) together with the intestinal fat of pigs (Schweinflomen) and season it with salt, wine vinegar, grains of paradise, and ginger, and fill it into ox guts. They can be used for boiling or roasting.
2 Item you chop the tender, roasting-grade venison (Hirschmoerbraten) together with bacon, whole pepper, wild cumin (Haberköhm), salt and wine vinegar and put them into pig guts. When they have dried a little, you roast them on the griddle and drizzle them with dripping. You cook drippings, ground cumin and wine vinegar in a pan and use it on the sausages (gib es ueber). When you wish to serve them, strew them with salt etc.
I think these are meant to be served fresh, as Bratwürste, not dried or smoked. The instruction ‘when they have dried a little’ would thus refer to a brief period of resting, not a long exposure to air or smoke. The spice Haberköhm, literally ‘oat caraway’, most likely refers to wild cumin.
Franz de Rontzier, head cook to the bishop of Halberstadt and duke of Braunschweig, published his encyclopaedic Kunstbuch von mancherley Essen in 1598. He clearly looks to Marx Rumpolt’s New Kochbuch as the new gold standard, but fails to match it in engaging style or depth. He is thus overshadowed by the twin peaks of Marx Rumpolt and Anna Wecker. What makes his work interesting is the way in which he systematically lists versions of a class of dishes, illustrating the breadth or a court cook’s repertoire. He is also more modernly fashionable than Rumpolt. Looking to France rather than Italy and Spain for inspiration, and some of the dishes he first describes may be genuine innovations.