British Sausage Week

This week is British Sausage Week, held to promote the eating of British reared pork, and you can vote for your own favourite on the website.  There are useful guides to buying prime cuts of pork , as well as a host of recipes to encourage people to cook with sausages.

Incidentally – you thought that Lady Gaga was setting a trend with her meat fashion – think again ……

The word sausage originally comes from the Latin word salsus, which means salted or preserved. In the days of old people did not have refrigeration to preserve their meat and so making sausage was a way of overcoming this problem.

The first sausages were made by early humans, stuffing roasted intestines into stomachs. As early as 589 BC, a Chinese sausage làcháng was mentioned consisting of goat and lamb meat. Around 2,700 years ago the Greek poet Homer mentioned a kind of blood sausage in the Odyssey,

“These goat sausages sizzling here in the fire – we packed them with fat and blood to have for supper.  Now, whoever wins this bout and proves the stronger, Let that man step up and take his pick of the lot !”

Epicharmus, who  lived sometime between c. 540 and c. 450 BC, wrote a comedy titled “The Sausage”.  Evidence suggests that sausages were already popular both among the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Dry sausage was born as a result of the discovery of new spices, which helped to enhance, flavour and preserve the meat.  Different countries and different cities within those countries started producing their own distinctive types of sausage, both fresh and dry.  These different types of sausage were mostly influenced by the availability of ingredients as well as the climate.

Some parts of the world with periods of cold climate, such as northern Europe were able to keep their fresh sausage without refrigeration, during the cold months.  They also developed a process of smoking the sausage to help preserve the meat during the warmer months.  The hotter climates in the south of Europe developed dry sausage, which did not need refrigeration at all.

Sausages are a result of economical butchery. Traditionally, sausage-makers put to use tissues and organs which are perfectly edible and nutritious, but not particularly appealing – such as scraps, organ meats, blood, and fat – in a form that allows for preservation: typically, salted and stuffed into a tubular casing made from the cleaned and turned inside-out intestine of the animal, producing the characteristic cylindrical shape. Hence, sausages, puddings and salami are amongst the oldest of prepared foods, whether cooked and eaten immediately or dried to varying degrees.

Basically people living in particular areas developed their own types of sausage and that sausage became associated with the area. For example ……

Cumberland sausage

Cumberland sausage

This is considered to be the meatiest British sausage.  It is a chunky, course cut pork sausage spiced with black pepper, a  few gratings of fresh nutmeg and mace and a pinch each of marjoram, sage and cayenne pepper. It is made in a continuous spiral and traditionally sold by length rather than weight.  Looks very impressive when coiled in a spiral and cooked whole

Lincolnshire sausage

Lincolnshire sausage

Old fashioned herby regional sausage traditionally made with pork, bread and sage, although thyme seems to be creeping in.

Marylebone sausage

A traditional London butchers sausage made with mace, ginger and sage.

Charlie the Butcher