Got a Real-World Weapon, Armor or Tactics Question? Mk. XXV

[Galloglaich]

This is also how European swords were designed in the High to Late middle ages. Peter Johnsson describes a sword blade as being more like an airplane wing than a 'sharpened crowbar' of modern trope. European swords were also designed with various alloys, harder for certain parts of the edges, softer / more flexible for the core or the spine (depending on the type) and all integrated in a very sophisticated mathematics in terms of the design.

G

[Brother Oni]

Several questions for anyone with experience making, owning, or buying armor:

1) How thick (in layer as well as cm/inches, but specifically the later) should a historical accurate gambeson be? What is the weight of a knee-length gambeson of that thickness?

By gambeson, I mean the stand-alone armor used by poorer troops, but I will also appreciate information of padded garment for metal armor.

2) Assuming similar thickness, will there be any difference of weight and protective qualities of multi-layered and stuffed gambeson?

3) Was wearing gambeson on top of another padded garment (aketon), without metal armor in between, historically done? Or troops wore gambeson directly over their normal (non-padded) clothes?

1)Thickness is dependent on several things, primarily the weave, type and quality of the material, which is related to the period in question. A Viking ages (9th to 11th Century) gambeson solely for armour was uncommon but known of, and would have consisted of ~30 layers of linen. Ballparking the linen at 200g/m², it'd make it ~2.8cm thick.

The size of the gambeson is obviously dependent on the size of the person it was intended to fit, but modelling the gambeson as two tubes: body of 100cm circumference and 100cm length (1m²) and shoulders of 50cm circumference by 100cm length (0.5m²), this gives a surface area of 1.5m², making it weigh (200g/m²x1.5m²x30) = 9kg.

This sounds heavy compared to other gambesons, but it is a 30 layer gambeson (many were much less protective - I've seen between 15-24 layers as typical) and 200g/m² is a fairly heavy duty high quality cloth.

Layered textile armours worn under armour would typically be about the lower end of the layer scale mentioned.

2) Stuffed gambesons are much lighter, warmer and less protective. Warmth can be either good or bad however - it's great if you're in Northern Europe during winter, not so good in the Middle East. Stuffed gambesons also don't do as well when water's involved (heavy rainfall, swimming whether voluntary or involuntary) as the wool will soak up large amounts of water, making it very, very heavy.

3)I've not heard of double gambeson-ing without mail involved - there is a first hand Arabian scholar's account (I think Saracen) of a Frankish knight coming through an arrow shower looking like a hedgehog but completely unharmed thanks to his wearing a second gambeson over his mail and gambeson.
Gambesons could and have been worn straight over regular clothing.

Wearing mail under your clothes was very common in the middle ages, particularly in Italy. They may have had some underclothing beneath the mail.

To expand on this point, mail could be made so well by this period, that the only way to tell whether it was worn was by contact, hence the handshake variant where two men would grasp each other's forearms; to check that the other person isn't wearing mail and/or doesn't have a knife up their sleeve.

[Lemmy]

I don't know how to ask this without making it too generic a question, so I apologize in advance...

How easy was it to store food for long periods of time in the middle ages?

How much food did castles typically store in times of war?

And finally... During a siege, is there any viable way the sieged can obtain food?

[Haighus]

I don't know how to ask this without making it too generic a question, so I apologize in advance...

How easy was it to store food for long periods of time in the middle ages?

How much food did castles typically store in times of war?

And finally... During a siege, is there any viable way the sieged can obtain food?

I think castles typically had enough food to last about a year.

Some castles were deliberately built on the coast to allow for resupply by sea during sieges. A good example being the English castles in north Wales, like Conway, Caernarvon and Harlech. I think Malta was resupplied by sea during the Great Siege too. I am not aware of any other reliable methods, although rivers could also be used in a similar way if they are not controlled by the attackers. Access to a waterway probably also allows fishing. Some supplies could probably be obtained through a postern if the enemy lines were not sufficiently continuous to prevent smuggling.

I believe local livestock was also coralled in the castle when a siege was impending to provide for fresh food. Castles typically have a small garden for food, but I doubt this was enough to sustain the garrison in most cases.

[Xuc Xac]

From what I understand, Titanium wouldn't be good for blades, given the whole poor edge thing, and it wouldn't be great for blunt weapons, given the whole it's light thing, but it'd be good, if way too expensive, for armour.

Titanium is basically super-aluminum. It doesn't compare to steel for things like cutting. The 'stronger than steel' thing is very misleading - stronger by weight.

That's the thing. Everyone focuses on the "stronger and lighter" quality and forgets about density. If you made a suit of plate armor out of titanium that offered the same protection as steel, you'd look like an aluminum marshmallow. You probably wouldn't be able to put your arms down.

[The Jack]

That's the thing. Everyone focuses on the "stronger and lighter" quality and forgets about density. If you made a suit of plate armor out of titanium that offered the same protection as steel, you'd look like an aluminum marshmallow. You probably wouldn't be able to put your arms down.

A bit hyperbolic don't you think? Steel plate is really thin, like less than 3mm usually, so I'd be really surprised if titanium plate even approached 1cm. Now, steel is stronger by volume than pure titanium, but like... barely.

[Lemmy]

A bit hyperbolic don't you think? Steel plate is really thin, like less than 3mm usually, so I'd be really surprised if titanium plate even approached 1cm. Now, steel is stronger by volume than pure titanium, but like... barely.

In fact, the most commonly used Titanium alloys are stronger than the most commonly used steel alloys (but not as strong as the top-grade steel alloys).
The main advantage of titanium armor would be the weight, though.

Titanium also isn't as hard as steel, so it's easier to deform, but harder to break. This if good for armor, which can suffer a few dents and still remain functional long enough for the user to fix/replance the damaged parts... Blades, OTOH, have to be thin enough to be sharp and hard enough to remain so on impact, for even small deformations can mean a huge loss of sharpness... In this case, it's better to use steel.

Oh... And titanium is significantly harder to work than steel. To the point where it might simply not be feasible for medieval-ish societies, even if they somehow had access to the metal.

[The Jack]

Oh... And titanium is significantly harder to work than steel. To the point where it might simply not be feasible for medieval-ish societies, even if they somehow had access to the metal.

How? The melting points are similar.

[Lemmy]

How? The melting points are similar.

Well, I'm no materials engineer and have no expertise of any kind on medieval metalurgy... So I'm basing this on what I learned in college and heard from people I worked with. I have no idea how well that translates to medieval smithing processes:

Titanium is oddly bad at conducting heat (for a metal), so the heat generated in the cutting process tends to concentrate on the tool being used for the cutting.

Due to its elasticity, pieces of titanium tend to move away from the tool unless the worker takes extra measures and/or efforts to prevent it.

Certain common grinding techniques can cause titanium to end up with significantly lower fatigue strength.

That's what I can remember off of the top of my head.

[Knaight]

How? The melting points are similar.

That's one physical property, and as previously discussed you generally don't just cast everything. It's basically everything else about titanium that makes it less cooperative - it cuts weird, it drills weird, it gets tiny dust fragments everywhere that get in the way unless you work it carefully, it's not particularly flexible or springy which makes it really fun to work, it doesn't distribute temperature as well due to a combination of specific heat and heat transfer properties, so on and so forth.

Titanium is just a pain in general.

[Max_Killjoy]

That's one physical property, and as previously discussed you generally don't just cast everything. It's basically everything else about titanium that makes it less cooperative - it cuts weird, it drills weird, it gets tiny dust fragments everywhere that get in the way unless you work it carefully, it's not particularly flexible or springy which makes it really fun to work, it doesn't distribute temperature as well due to a combination of specific heat and heat transfer properties, so on and so forth.

Titanium is just a pain in general.

Which really highlights just how useful the stuff is once you manage to work out all the challenges of making things with it -- it's such a PITA that no one would bother with it if it were just another metal and didn't have some very nice properties otherwise.

[wolflance]

1)Thickness is dependent on several things, primarily the weave, type and quality of the material, which is related to the period in question. A Viking ages (9th to 11th Century) gambeson solely for armour was uncommon but known of, and would have consisted of ~30 layers of linen. Ballparking the linen at 200g/m², it'd make it ~2.8cm thick.

The size of the gambeson is obviously dependent on the size of the person it was intended to fit, but modelling the gambeson as two tubes: body of 100cm circumference and 100cm length (1m²) and shoulders of 50cm circumference by 100cm length (0.5m²), this gives a surface area of 1.5m², making it weigh (200g/m²x1.5m²x30) = 9kg.

This sounds heavy compared to other gambesons, but it is a 30 layer gambeson (many were much less protective - I've seen between 15-24 layers as typical) and 200g/m² is a fairly heavy duty high quality cloth.

Layered textile armours worn under armour would typically be about the lower end of the layer scale mentioned.

2) Stuffed gambesons are much lighter, warmer and less protective. Warmth can be either good or bad however - it's great if you're in Northern Europe during winter, not so good in the Middle East. Stuffed gambesons also don't do as well when water's involved (heavy rainfall, swimming whether voluntary or involuntary) as the wool will soak up large amounts of water, making it very, very heavy.

3)I've not heard of double gambeson-ing without mail involved - there is a first hand Arabian scholar's account (I think Saracen) of a Frankish knight coming through an arrow shower looking like a hedgehog but completely unharmed thanks to his wearing a second gambeson over his mail and gambeson.
Gambesons could and have been worn straight over regular clothing.

Thanks for the info, much appreciated. This give me a much better grasp on the weight of gambeson.

Any info on arming doublet and aketon?

I don't know how to ask this without making it too generic a question, so I apologize in advance...

How easy was it to store food for long periods of time in the middle ages?

How much food did castles typically store in times of war?

And finally... During a siege, is there any viable way the sieged can obtain food?

Some grain foods like rice can be stored indefinitely, as long as it's not spoiled by mice or other pests.

Carefully fermented/salted/smoked foods can last several months, or even up to a year if you're not too picky.

[Mr Beer]

Fresh apples can be stored for months if laid down carefully, probably root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips etc. would do the same.

I think pickled food and salted food can last a lot longer than a few months, probably years in cool, dry, dark conditions.

Honey lasts forever if sealed.

Wine is good for years in cellars, beer not as long but still a while...I think hops extend its life, not sure though.

Hardtack or ship's biscuits, can be made so they last for years if kept dry. Not sure if this was a common item in the main siege eras (there's certainly some crossover between ships biscuits and castles) but I bet something similar could have been made and probably was even before the era of transatlantic voyages.

Main problem would be vermin, followed by climate control. Food preparation would need to be on point. If you had all that dialled in plus an abundant supply to stock up first with plus some limited fortified space to grow green vegetables and ideally have a few animals going for milk and eggs...you could last years.

[Xuc Xac]

A bit hyperbolic don't you think? Steel plate is really thin, like less than 3mm usually, so I'd be really surprised if titanium plate even approached 1cm. Now, steel is stronger by volume than pure titanium, but like... barely.

Titanium has a high tensile strength, but that's not the kind of strength you need for armor. If you don't want swords to slice your belly like an armored henchman with a face-concealing helmet in a cheap B-grade movie, you'll want thicker plates.

In fact, the most commonly used Titanium alloys are stronger than the most commonly used steel alloys (but not as strong as the top-grade steel alloys).

The most commonly used steel alloys are not the ones you'd want to make armor out of.

Oh... And titanium is significantly harder to work than steel. To the point where it might simply not be feasible for medieval-ish societies, even if they somehow had access to the metal.

How? The melting points are similar.

If you get steel hot enough, it melts. You just have to bake it in a kiln with some coal. Melting iron with hot coal is how steel (iron plus carbon) was originally made by accident.

If you try that with titanium, it will burn before it melts. It burns with both oxygen and nitrogen. If you want to melt it, you have to heat it in a vacuum. That's impossible at a medieval level of technology, even if they got their hands on some metallic titanium, which would only happen if a much more advanced civilisation just handed it to them. Extracting titanium from its ore is an incredibly difficult process that requires a very developed and extensive industrial infrastructure: it requires a huge amount of electricity, chlorine gas, and other hard to obtain or handle metals such as liquid sodium or magnesium.

Titanium is at the skinny end of a very long branch on the tech development tree, because it has a lot of prerequisites. On the other hand, if you know the formula, you can skip the bronze age entirely and go straight from stone to steel.

[Brother Oni]

Thanks for the info, much appreciated. This give me a much better grasp on the weight of gambeson.

Any info on arming doublet and aketon?

Those two items are a bit out of my time period (15th-16th Century) and I don't know much about the fabrics of that time, so please take all numbers as educated guesses.

I believe an arming doublet covers the torso with long arms, has less layers and has armour attachment points. Assuming it's made of the same material as the gambeson, has 20 layers and ignoring the metal bits:

Modelling it again as 2 tubes: body of 100cm circumference and 70cm length (0.7m²) and shoulders of 50cm circumference by 130cm length (0.65m²), this gives a surface area of 1.35m², making it weigh (200g/m²x1.35m²x20) = 5.4kg and ~1.9cm thick.

Some arming doublets intended to be worn under plate armour, have mail attached over the parts (joints, shoulders, etc) that aren't covered by the plates. I'll have to take a look at some modern reproductions to get an idea of exactly what parts are covered to estimate the coverage for calculating the weight of the mail.

I believe an aketon is the same as an arming doublet, but with additional mail reinforcement between the layers, similar to the principle of a jack of plate.
For the textile part, assume the same as the arming doublet, but you'll have to wait until tonight for when I get home and have access to my books to figure out the weight of the mail - I can't remember how many links per m² typical western 4 in 1 weave is.

Edit: a short sleeve, short skirt mail shirt made of 1.5mm wire with a 10mm ID would weigh ~12kg, so the whole aketon would be ~17kg. In all likelihood they'd probably have skimped a bit on the mail (higher gauge (ie thinner) links with larger ID), so adjust that weight down a bit.

If you get steel hot enough, it melts. You just have to bake it in a kiln with some coal. Melting iron with hot coal is how steel (iron plus carbon) was originally made by accident.

If you try that with titanium, it will burn before it melts. It burns with both oxygen and nitrogen. If you want to melt it, you have to heat it in a vacuum. That's impossible at a medieval level of technology, even if they got their hands on some metallic titanium, which would only happen if a much more advanced civilisation just handed it to them. Extracting titanium from its ore is an incredibly difficult process that requires a very developed and extensive industrial infrastructure: it requires a huge amount of electricity, chlorine gas, and other hard to obtain or handle metals such as liquid sodium or magnesium.

To expand on this point a bit, aluminium was once worth more than gold as the only method of producing it, involved processing the aluminium ore with sodium hydroxide to make aluminium oxide, dissolving the aluminium oxide in molten cryolite at >1000C, then electrolysis of that molten material.

Aluminium has less than half the melting point of iron (660C vs 1538C), but is considerably more reactive, hence the difficulty of extraction.
It's not a big surprise that all the common metals found from antiquity to the early modern period are less reactive than carbon.

[The Jack]

Can't you just melt it anyway, despite it's burns?



Another question for the metallurgists out there.
If you were in a pre-industrial society, and couldn't have Iron or copper, what could you use to make metal armour and weapons? Is there a silver equivelent to bronze or a metal that'd approximate steel fairly well?

Rarer in the earth is a given, but nothing super rare.

[Xuc Xac]

Can't you just melt it anyway, despite it's burns?

No. It burns at a lower temperature than it melts. If you heat it in air, it will ignite and burn before it's hot enough to melt.

[The Jack]

No. It burns at a lower temperature than it melts. If you heat it in air, it will ignite and burn before it's hot enough to melt.

Yeah but couldn't you just ignore that and melt the burnt Titanium?

[Xuc Xac]

Yeah but couldn't you just ignore that and melt the burnt Titanium?

Do you know what you're asking? Burnt titanium isn't metal anymore. It's titanium oxides and nitrides.

If you burn carbon (such as a piece of coal), it turns into carbon dioxide. You can't "melt" the carbon dioxide to get liquid carbon, because it's not carbon anymore.

[Brother Oni]

Another question for the metallurgists out there.
If you were in a pre-industrial society, and couldn't have Iron or copper, what could you use to make metal armour and weapons? Is there a silver equivelent to bronze or a metal that'd approximate steel fairly well?

It's more likely that a non-metal working society would use a different material for their arms and armour. The Aztecs used wood and obsidian primarily for their weapons and linen for their armour, while I believe various Inuit cultures use wood, animal hide and bone.

Yeah but couldn't you just ignore that and melt the burnt Titanium?

If you melt 'burnt titanium', all you end up with is molten 'burnt titanium'. It doesn't magically revert back to pure titanium just because it's in a molten state - you'd have to keep it in a vacuum to stop it reacting with the atmosphere and use something more reactive than the titanium to remove whatever it's bonded to.

Melting iron ore does turn it back into iron because the more reactive carbon (ie coal) reacts with the various materials the iron is bonded to, freeing up the iron. This floats to the surface of the molten iron as slag and has to be regularly scraped off during smelting.

[Lemmy]

Thanks to everyone who answered my question about food storage... I do have a follow-up question, though...

How good was the "storage technogy" at the time? I mean... How well could they keep grains, honey, etc free from the elements and pests?

What could they do to preserve grains, for example, other than throw the sacks in a dry room and hope for the best? Was there some sort of pest control (cats?)?

How practical and effective were glass/ceramics containers?

[Max_Killjoy]

If you melt 'burnt titanium', all you end up with is molten 'burnt titanium'. It doesn't magically revert back to pure titanium just because it's in a molten state - you'd have to keep it in a vacuum to stop it reacting with the atmosphere and use something more reactive than the titanium to remove whatever it's bonded to.

Melting iron ore does turn it back into iron because the more reactive carbon (ie coal) reacts with the various materials the iron is bonded to, freeing up the iron. This floats to the surface of the molten iron as slag and has to be regularly scraped off during smelting.

Titanium is strange stuff. It's really resistant to most reactions, until it gets hot enough, and then it's really reactive with air.

[Mike_G]

Thanks to everyone who answered my question about food storage... I do have a follow-up question, though...

How good was the "storage technogy" at the time? I mean... How well could they keep grains, honey, etc free from the elements and pests?

What could they do to preserve grains, for example, other than throw the sacks in a dry room and hope for the best? Was there some sort of pest control (cats?)?

How practical and effective were glass/ceramics containers?

Storage is tricky. Bottles or jars could be stopped and sealed with wax, but actual cork, from cork trees, would have been hard to get in most of Europe. Maybe there were a few in Spain or Italy, but certainly none in Northern or Eastern Europe.

Usually the cool, dry place, and aggressively hunting rats and mice would be the go to. One of the theories behind the domestication of cats and dogs is for hunting rodents. Cats kill a lot of mice if you let them. Even well fed modern domestic cats will kill a surprising amount of them.

Salting, pickling, smoking or drying will extend the life of meats and fish and some vegetables. Beer and wine will last a while because the alcohol in them inhibits bacteria. Honey is also pretty hard on bacteria.

The biggest worries would be humidity and vermin.

[Galloglaich]

Thanks to everyone who answered my question about food storage... I do have a follow-up question, though...

How good was the "storage technogy" at the time? I mean... How well could they keep grains, honey, etc free from the elements and pests?

What could they do to preserve grains, for example, other than throw the sacks in a dry room and hope for the best? Was there some sort of pest control (cats?)?

How practical and effective were glass/ceramics containers?

Grain was usually stored in stone or brick granaries / silos basically just in a big pile. Often they would use towers similar to modern grain silos. This is one in Wales (Caernarfon Castle):



More broadly, a lot of what we think of as European food culture is specifically food prepared in a very careful and sophisticated way for long term storage without refrigeration. At the risk of repeating what some others have already mentioned, these would include:

Hard cheeses (think parmesan aka Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese) in the form of a wheel coated in wax

Spoiler: Real Cheese

Show

Hard sausages (think salami, sauciscon etc.)
Real actual cured hams (not like the ones we have today) and all kinds of other cured meat


(there is a reason why you see them hanging like that and coated in certain ways...
For example they would often coat certain types of sausages in yeast to prevent (other) mold from growing on them when stored for a real long time.)

Pickles (and every kind of pickled vegetables or fruit you can imagine)
Sauerkraut (and many other types of brined vegetables)
Dried / Salted / Smoked fish (properly dried fish could be used to tile a roof almost)
Pickled fish (think herring)
Olive oil (of course)
Vinegar
Dried pasta
Various types of animal fat (often with a little salt added)
Fruit "preserved" in honey
Wine
Beer
... and I'm probably forgetting a lot of other stuff.

But basically a whole lot of what we think of as just quirky original French, German, Italian, Spanish etc. food, is the way it is because it's been made to be preserved without refrigeration.



here is an image of two ladies making pasta and setting it to dry from the 14th Century


Every large castle, nearly every large or fortified home, most farms, and all towns had provisions for long term storage of vast quantities of food, as well as a separate water source. The standard preparation was to have a year of food (this was something which cities did as a community, but individuals would also try to do it). These would be dry, cool, and vast cellars, designed to be ventilated properly and for easy inspection. They could be on quite a vast scale - later medieval architecture in general is typically on a scale that we tend to underestimate.

For example these old Teutonic Order Granaries in the town of Graudziadz in Poland date from the 14th Century. They were designed mainly for the grain trade on the Vistula but were also used as grain storage for wartime.

Spoiler: 14th Century granaries

Show

Also keep in mind, most of Europe is not humid the way most of the US East of the Rockies is. It's a different type of climate.

More warlike towns or princes, or anyone in areas beset by frequent wars or raids (such as land near the Mongols or anywhere near a border with another power) would often keep sufficient provisions for much longer.

Vermin could be a problem of course. I know of at least two legends from earlier medieval Poland in which tyrants were eaten by mice. Probably a shortening of "tyrants [grain] was eaten by mice [during a siege]".

It was not uncommon for large fortified towns to take in thousands of peasants from the countryside during a major siege and

The storage cellars in Strasbourg famously have a keg of wine which has been down there since the 15th Century. The last time they opened it up was when France was liberated in 1944.



This is the actual barrel from 1472



https://www.wine-searcher.com/m/2012...ction-of-funds

"Built in 1395, the historic cellar is famed for having a barrel filled with 300 liters of wine dating back to 1472 – thought to be the world’s oldest wine stored in barrel. In 1994, the wine was tested by wine scientists at a Strasbourg laboratory. They described the wine as having “a beautiful and brilliant amber appearance, a powerful, elegant and very complex nose with aromas reminiscent of vanilla, honey, wax, fine spices, hazelnut and fruit liqueur.”"


So in summary, like many things Medieval, these people made a virtue - or even, high culinary art- out of necessity, at least some of the time. While it's true few people are probably going out of their way for dried haddock, smoked salmon, prosciutto, soppressata, real Parma cheese, not to mention 500 year old "beautiful and brilliant amber" wine, is all highly sought after stuff.

[gkathellar]

If you get steel hot enough, it melts. You just have to bake it in a kiln with some coal. Melting iron with hot coal is how steel (iron plus carbon) was originally made by accident.

I seem to remember that more sophisticated medieval smithies would do this with wood and other flammable materials, too, and just generally use the fuel itself as part of the process of getting their desired chemical composition.

[Clistenes]

I don't know how to ask this without making it too generic a question, so I apologize in advance...

How easy was it to store food for long periods of time in the middle ages?

How much food did castles typically store in times of war?

And finally... During a siege, is there any viable way the sieged can obtain food?

Machiavelli wrote that it was standard for German free cities to keep one year's worth of food, water, fuel and ammo, which made almost impossible to take them because the resources required to besiege a whole city were so great that almost nobody could keep a siege going for more than a year.

I guess castles would keep at least one year's worth of consumables too, not just because of sieges, but because they gathered all the food they were going to eat during the next year during harvest: Not just grain, most animals they intended to eat were killed and salted or smoked or turned into sausages at the beginning of winter, to avoid having to feed them during the lean months; a few were kept alive as breeders or so the table of the lord would have fresh meat.

As for how long can food stay edible without fridges: Some sites about food storing claim that "wheat, rice, pasta, oats, beans, and potatoes that can last 30 years or more."

This site explains it in some detail (warning: religion suff).

During middle ages they could put the grains and beans in ceramic jars and seal them with clay for very long term preservation, I guess, instead of using glass jars with airtight lids and oxygen-absorbing packets... I know Romans did it sometimes.

Real actual cured hams (not like the ones we have today) and all kinds of other cured meat.

There were some friends in Madrid who bought a ham at the beginning of WWI, and hanged it in a tavern (The Sparrow tavern), with the intention of eating it in a small party they intended to celebrate the day the war ended.

The war lasted too long, and the ham, while edible, was too hard and dry, so rather than eating it they decided to keep it hanging in the tavern as a memento.

The ham is still there today, a hundred years later, kept in a glass box, as a relic. I don't know if it would be still edible (probably not, but there are fungi and bacteria that can live in very dry and salty environments...), but it never rot, it just became harder and drier over time...

[Galloglaich]

You could probably make a nice ham and split pea soup out of it... :)

(Fantastic story by the way love it)

G

[Clistenes]

(there is a reason why you see them hanging like that and coated in certain ways...
For example they would often coat certain types of sausages in yeast to prevent (other) mold from growing on them when stored for a real long time.)

And that's the reason they are covered in flour, so you can't see the yeast.

My dad once tried to make some traditional salami, but he covered it with modern, industrial baking flour, rather than artisanal flour, and the salami turned green and weird...

[Mr Beer]

My dad made his own hams once and smoked them. They were still edible > 2 years later, and also delicious.

He had his own issues with other preserved foods though e.g. intestines are difficult to work with as sausage skins, duck liver pate is something to steer way clear of if it goes off etc.

[Lemmy]

Once again, thank you all for the answers to my questions. You went far above and beyond my expectations and hopes. This thread really is an amazing gift to the community. You have my gratitude and respect.