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A sausage is a prepared food product usually made from ground meat, animal fat, salt, and spices, and sometimes other ingredients such as herbs, and generally packed in a casing. Sausage making is a traditional food preservation technique, originating in the European cuisine. more...

Traditionally, casings have been made of animal intestines, though they are now often synthetic. Some sausages are cooked during processing, and the casing may be removed at that time. Sausages may be preserved by curing, drying in cool air, or smoking. The distinct flavor of some sausages is due to fermentation by Lactobacillus during curing.

There is no consensus as to whether similar products not packed in casings, such as pâté, meatloaf, scrapple and head cheese could be considered sausage.

Besides being eaten on its own, sausage is also used as an ingredient in other foods.

History

Sausage is a logical outcome of efficient butchery. Sausage-makers put to use meat and animal parts that are edible and nutritious, but not particularly appealing, such as scraps, organ meats, blood, and fat, and that allow the preservation of meat that can not be consumed immediately. These were typically salted and stuffed into a tubular casing made from the cleaned 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.

It is often assumed that sausages were invented by Sumerians in what is Iraq today, around 3000 BC. Chinese sausage làcháng (臘腸/腊肠), which consisted of goat and lamb meat, was first mentioned in 589 BC. Homer, the poet of Ancient Greece, mentioned a kind of blood sausage in the Odyssey (book 20, verse 25), and Epicharmus (ca. 550 BC – ca. 460 BC) wrote a comedy titled The Sausage. Evidence suggests that sausages were already popular both among the ancient Greeks and Romans, and most likely with the non-literate tribes occupying the larger part of Europe.

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