Sausage

• 1. Introduction

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  The sausage, a meat product built from ground meat, salt and spices, once stood at the center of an ancient Greek comedy. In The Knights, the playwright Aristophanes tells the story of a sausage vendor who is elected leader. A sausage seller could carry a whole political satire because the food was already thoroughly familiar to his audience. Most sausages are seasoned meat packed into a cylindrical casing. Yet the word also covers loose meat, patties, dried slabs, red-dyed frankfurters and recipes with no meat at all. How did scraps and organs grow into a tradition found on nearly every inhabited continent? What exactly sits inside the casing, and who decides what a label may claim? And why does a sausage in one country taste so unlike its cousin in the next?

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• 2. Ancient Appetites

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  The word sausage first turned up in English in the mid-15th century, spelled sawsyge. It came from Old North French saussiche, the ancestor of Modern French saucisse. Behind that sits Vulgar Latin salsica, from salsicus, meaning seasoned with salt. The name therefore records the one ingredient that made the food last.

  Much older evidence survives on clay. An Akkadian cuneiform tablet records a dish of intestine casings filled with some sort of forcemeat. In the Odyssey, the poet Homer mentions a kind of blood sausage. The playwright Epicharmus wrote a comedy simply titled The Sausage. Evidence suggests that sausages were popular among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and most likely among the tribes across much of Europe.

  Italy's most famous ancient sausage came from Lucania, a region that is now Basilicata. It was called lucanica, and the name lives on in a range of Mediterranean sausages. Under the Roman emperor Nero, sausages were associated with the Lupercalia festival. Early in the 10th century, in the Byzantine Empire, Leo VI the Wise outlawed the production of blood sausages after cases of food poisoning.

  China has its own early record. A sausage called lap cheong is described as far back as the Northern and Southern dynasties, which ran from 420 to 589.

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• 3. Salt and Smoke

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  Salted scraps, organs, blood and fat were the raw materials of the first sausages. Butchers who wasted nothing found that salt helped these tissues last, and that cleaned animal intestines made a ready container. Stuffing produced the cylindrical shape people still recognize. Sausage making is therefore counted among the traditional ways of preserving food.

  Several methods keep a sausage from spoiling. Curing, drying, smoking and freezing all work, and drying is often paired with fermentation or culturing, which adds to preservation. Some cured or smoked sausages need no refrigeration at all. Most fresh sausages must stay cold or frozen until they are cooked. Others are cooked during processing, and the casing may then be removed.

  Lap cheong shows fermentation at work. This dried Chinese pork sausage keeps well, largely because of a very high level of lactobacilli. The level is so high that many people find the sausage sour.

  In Poland, climate pushed makers toward smoke. Sausages there were traditionally preserved by smoking, rather than by the drying common in Mediterranean countries.

  Russia took a chemical route. One pre-revolutionary recipe called for as much as half a pound of saltpetre for every pood of meat, so the sausage could be stored without refrigeration.

  In Ukraine, kovbasa roasted in an oven on both sides can be stored in ceramic pots packed with lard.

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• 4. Inside the Casing

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  Natural casings come from the cleaned intestines of animals, or from stomachs in the case of haggis and other traditional puddings. Today collagen, cellulose and even plastic casings often replace them, especially in industrial production. In parts of the southern United States, Snowden's, Monroe Sausage, Conecuh Sausage and Kelly Foods still use natural casings, mostly from hog or sheep intestines.

  The filling itself is meat, cut or ground, mixed with other ingredients. Pork, beef, veal and poultry are the most common meats. Cheap starch fillers such as breadcrumbs or grains are frequent, and flavorings run from spices to apple and leek. The balance of lean meat to fat depends on the style and the producer.

  In the United Kingdom and other countries with English cuisine traditions, bread and starch fillers may make up around 30% of a sausage. As the meat contracts in the heat, the filler swells and soaks up moisture and fat, which helps the sausage keep its shape. Many traditional sausages from Asia and mainland Europe use no bread filler, only lean meat, fat and flavorings.

  At the cheapest end of the food industry, almost any part of the animal can end up in the casing. That includes mechanically recovered meat, which is meat blasted off carcasses, along with rusk. The finest sausages hold only choice cuts and seasoning.

  Some jurisdictions regulate what may be called a sausage. The United States Department of Agriculture caps the fat in defined sausage types at 30%, 35% or 50% by weight. In the United Kingdom, a pork sausage needs at least 42% meat, and other meat sausages need 32%. Later EU law no longer lets mechanically recovered meat count toward that figure.

  Labels have a curious quirk. The declared meat percentage can top 100%. This happens when the weight of the meat going in exceeds the weight of the finished sausage, because drying has removed water.

  In Britain, the word meat on a label could once include fat, connective tissue and mechanically recovered meat. These ingredients may still be used but must now be declared as such, and up to 10% water can go unlabelled.

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• 5. Asian Traditions

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  Belutak, the traditional beef sausage of Brunei, begins with minced beef and tallow. The mixture is marinated with garlic, salt, chillies and spices, then stuffed into the small intestines of a cow or buffalo. It is fermented through dehydration and served as a side dish alongside ambuyat.

  In Harbin, China's northernmost major city, makers produce a smoked, savory red sausage called hóng cháng. It resembles Lithuanian and Polish sausages such as kiełbasa and podhalańska, so it tastes more European than other Chinese sausages. The Churin sausage factory, financed with Russian capital, first made it in 1909. Harbin-style sausage has since become popular across China, especially in the north.

  In southwestern China, sausages are flavored with salt, red pepper and wild pepper, and cooks often cure them by smoking and air drying. Taiwan offers a playful twist called small sausage in large sausage. A piece of Taiwanese pork sausage is wrapped in a sticky rice sausage and usually served chargrilled.

  Laos is known for sai ua and sai gork. The name sai oua combines sai, meaning intestine, with ua, meaning stuffed. It originated in Luang Prabang, the royal capital of the Lan Xang kingdom, which lasted from 1353 to 1707. A pork version, sai ua moo, appears in the hand-written recipes of Phia Sing, who lived from 1898 to 1967 and served as the king's personal chef and master of ceremonies. Lao communities enjoy both sausages abroad as well as at home.

  In the Philippines, northern regions call sausages longaniza, while southern regions say chorizo. Most are fresh or smoked, and they are sorted mainly into sweet styles, called jamonado or hamonado, and garlicky styles, called de recado. Regional examples include Vigan longganisa, Alaminos longganisa and Chorizo de Cebu. Pampanga longganisa is the best known. Most are pork, but chicken, beef and even tuna appear.

  Thailand has many regional sausages. Sai ua from the north is a grilled minced pork sausage seasoned with curry paste and fresh herbs. From the northeast, the region called Isan, comes sai krok Isan, a fermented sausage with a distinctive, slightly sour taste.

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• 6. European Tables

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  In the United Kingdom and Ireland, sausages are a common feature of the national diet and popular culture. They are normally made from raw pork, beef, venison or other meats, mixed with herbs, spices and cereals. Many recipes belong to particular regions, such as the Cumberland and Lincolnshire sausages. Most run 10-15 cm long and are twisted into links.

  Their tight skins often burst as the meat shrinks in the pan, which earned them the nickname bangers. Served with mashed potatoes, they form bangers and mash. At Christmas dinner, small chipolatas wrapped in bacon, called pigs in blankets, sit beside the roast turkey. In Dublin, sausages go into a stew called coddle and are boiled without first being browned.

  Scotland's square sausage, also called the Lorne sausage, is sliced from a rectangular block and seasoned mainly with pepper. It is a breakfast food, eaten as part of a full Scottish breakfast or on a morning roll. It is rarely seen outside Scotland.

  Poland has excelled at sausage making since the 14th century. Royal hunting trips through virgin forests produced game, which was sent as gifts to noble families, church leaders, city magistrates, academy professors, voivodes and the szlachta. Raw meat usually went out in winter, and processed meat through the rest of the year. Early Italian, French and German influences shaped the recipes. The historian Jan Długosz mentioned meat preserved in fat and by smoking in his Annales seu cronici incliti regni Poloniae, which cover events from 965 to 1480. They record King Władysław sending game to Queen Zofia from Niepołomice Forest, the favorite hunting ground of Polish royalty since the 13th century. Polish kiełbasa is generally pork, rarely beef, and sausages padded with soy protein, potato flour or water binders are regarded as low quality.

  Ukrainian kovbasa takes many forms, including domashnia, which is homemade, pechinky, which is liver, krovianka, which is filled with blood and buckwheat, and vudzhena, which is smoked. At Easter it sits in baskets beside dyed eggs called pysanka and the bread called paska, and a priest blesses it with holy water before anyone eats.

  In Denmark, hot dog stands called Pølsevogn are so ubiquitous that some people count pølser among the national dishes. Boiled Danish sausages often wear a bright-red dye in the casing. Legend says they began in Vienna, where day-old sausages were once ordered dyed as a warning.

  Sweden's falukorv is a grated mixture of pork and beef or veal with potato flour and mild spices. It is red-dyed and about 5 cm thick, and cooks bake it coated in mustard or fry it in slices. It is named for Falun, and German immigrants who came to work in the region's mines introduced it.

  In Iceland, lamb may go into sausages, and horse and mutton sausages are traditional, though their popularity is waning. Finland has mustamakkara, a black blood sausage that became a tradition in the Tampere region, and grilled sausages are especially popular in summer, around juhannus.

  Italy separates its sausages by spice. The south favors fennel seeds and chilli, while the center and north lean on black pepper and garlic. Lucanica di Picerno, made in Basilicata, is the modern identity of the sausage the Romans found in Lucania. Mazzafegato, the liver mash sausage, appears in Abruzzo, Lazio, Marche, Umbria and Tuscany, and the Abruzzo style adds orange peel and bay leaves. Salsiccia toscana uses pork shoulder and ham chopped with sage and rosemary.

  Spain divides sausages into fresh salchichas, which are cooked before eating, and cured embutidos, which are eaten uncooked. Chorizo, salchichón and sobrasada are cured. Navarre gave the world txistorra, a thin, long paprika sausage. French makers likewise distinguish saucisson sec, a cured sausage eaten uncooked, from saucisse, a fresh sausage that needs cooking. Switzerland's cooked cervelat is often called its national sausage, and in Germany currywurst, sausage with curry sauce, is a popular fast food. Greece's loukaniko takes its name from ancient Roman cuisine.

  Russia came late to the sausage. Traditional Russian cuisine avoided fine cutting or grinding of meat, and although sausage making was known from at least the 12th century, it largely took off with the Petrine reforms. After the Revolution, government-controlled plants modeled on American examples produced Soviet bolognas such as Doktorskaya and its fattier cousin Lyubitelskaya. Smoked sausages and salamis were status-loaded and scarce, while farmers sold home-style sausages at Kolkhoz markets. Since the return of capitalism, every imaginable type is made or imported, and factory Doctor's bologna still sits beside buckwheat-stuffed blood sausage.

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• 7. New World Links

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  Across most of Latin America, a few basic sausages recur with local twists. They are chorizo, which is raw rather than cured like its Spanish namesake, longaniza, morcilla and salchichas. Beef plays a larger part than in the pork-heavy Spanish versions.

  In Argentina and Uruguay, chorizo and morcilla, both of Spanish origin, are the stars of the traditional asado. Hot dogs there are called panchos, and a salame tandilero comes from the city of Tandil. Chile's most common sausage is longaniza, with the cities of Chillán and San Carlos prized for the best. Chileans also eat the blood sausage prieta and use Vienna sausages in the completo, their hot dog.

  In Colombia, a grilled chorizo with a buttered arepa is one of the most common street foods. Dried pork sausages such as cábanos and butifarras are served cold with beer. Mexican chorizo is fresh and deep red, and some of it is so loose that it spills from its casing and is crumbled into tortas, eggs, breakfast burritos and tacos. In El Salvador, the chorizos of Cojutepeque are separated by knotted corn husks.

  North American country sausage is uncooked ground pork with breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and sage. It has been made in the United States since colonial days. German immigrants developed meat-and-grain sausages there. Scrapple, a pork-and-cornmeal sausage, comes from the Mid-Atlantic States, goetta, a pork-and-oats sausage, from Cincinnati, and livermush, with pork, liver and cornmeal or rice, from North Carolina.

  Louisiana's andouille departs from its northern French ancestor. It is made mainly of pork butt rather than tripe and is heavily spiced with cayenne and black pepper. In Canada, locals of Flin Flon are especially fond of saucisse de Toulouse, often served with poutine. Hot dogs, also called frankfurters or wieners, are the most common pre-cooked sausage in the United States and Canada. The corn dog dips one in cornmeal batter, and pork roll is a regional favorite in New Jersey.

  Australians call English-style sausages snags, and the thick South Australian kind is known as Merryland. A sausage on a single slice of bread, topped with onions and tomato or barbecue sauce, is called a sausage sizzle. German immigration left a mark on South Australia, where towns such as Hahndorf and Tanunda make mettwurst. The Don small goods company created Twiggy Sticks, a snack sausage based on cabanossi, in 1991.

  In Kenya, mutura is made from goat and cow meat, tripe, cooked animal blood and spices. People eat it as street food and at gatherings.

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• 8. Measured and Meatless

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  The International Agency for Research on Cancer says processed meat causes cancer, particularly colorectal cancer. Because most sausages are cured, smoked or fermented, they count as processed meat. Strong evidence also links processed meat to higher risks of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes. The World Cancer Research Fund recommends minimizing consumption of processed meats. Meat sausages remain a source of protein.

  Florence Nicholson published an early recipe for vegetarian sausages in The Vegetarian in 1898. Makers can use tofu, seitan, nuts, pulses, mycoprotein, soya protein, vegetables or a mix of them, as long as the result holds together in cooking. Some versions copy the taste and texture of meat as closely as possible. Others, like the Glamorgan sausage, rely on spices and vegetables and make no attempt to imitate meat.

  A soya sausage, though not vegetarian, was invented in 1916 in Germany. It was first known as Kölner Wurst, or Cologne sausage, a name linked to Konrad Adenauer, who later became German Chancellor.

  In the 21st century, vegetarian and vegan sausages have become far more widely available and eaten, and the oldest recipe on record is from 1898.

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