How Were Sausages Created? | OpenRice Singapore

Sausages – the classic component of an American breakfast! However the sausage has been around for a very long time. In the olden days, as man discovered butchery, they also produced a lot of extra pieces of meat that weren’t part of the standard cuts, such as organ scraps. In order not to waste the extra meat, butchers minced the meat and stuffed them into the cleaned intestines of the same animals. Some of the earliest types of sausages were blood sausages, which are made by cooking blood until it congeals. Eastern cooks have preferred to leave it in the form of a pudding but in the Europe, most cooks have stuffed the congealed blood into intestines, hence turning them into blood sausages. Naturally this progressed to the other bits as mentioned above, and these were all done by the ancient Romans and Greek civilisations.

Eventually as the sausage spread across Europe, it was found to be a good way to use it to preserve food for the winter months, hence its name ‘sausage’ coming from the Latin word salsus, which means salted. From there the variations became endless as each country invented their own style of making sausages and preserving them. Given the wide range of sausage types, there are generally three ways to group them: the fresh, cooked and dried ones. The fresh sausages are quite obviously being the ones with meat that has not yet been cooked or dried; hence they have to be refrigerated if you won't consume them immediately after they have been made. Cooked sausages still have to be refrigerated after cooking; some are also slow-cooked over several days. Dried sausages are usually fermented and air-dried; they can be kept without refrigeration in the colder regions and don’t have to be cooked to be eaten. All these sausages can also be smoked for preservation and it adds a characteristic smoky tang to them. This is how we got all the traditional and famous sausages, like the English Cumberland sausages, the French cured saucissons, Italian cured salamis and mortadellas, the Spanish chorizos, and of course the famous German frankfurters, bratwursts and bockwursts. Later on, Italian and German immigrants who came into the United States of America brought with them their national sausages and this eventually led to the creation of classic hotdog that is so commonly associated with North America. In reverse, this spread across the world, popularising them in every other country and I’m sure by now you’ve eaten many a hotdog while growing up! Explore more German dishes here! Check out more Western Cuisine here!