History of Sausages (Term Paper Sample)

Name Surname Course Instructor Date History of sausages Sausages are found in all corners of the world today and have become a common food for all cultures. It is used in gatherings and celebration for many and also as a snack for some, and it all started as a salting-drying preservation technique. With the changes and varieties in sausages it is important to look at the history of sausages and its purposes in the past. This paper looks at different cultures and tries to assess its origins. It is difficult and utterly impossible to pinpoint the exact origin and period that sausages were first made due to the poor documentation, and also the fact that sausage making is a preservation technique for meat. Sausage making is connected to butchering of animals and trying to find ways to preserve the meat and extend its usability together with other products such as blood. There is a record of ancient Greeks eating sausages which were mostly made from pork and were being sold alongside offal at the food market in Athens, and the Greek word for sausage was ‘allas' (Gayler 12). The odyssey contains the oldest record of sausage as there is a reference of sausages in the book this is not to say that the Greeks invented sausage. Italy also started the making of sausages in the early times an idea which was brought to Ancient Rome by soldiers who served in Southern Italy. The Italian refer to sausages as the ‘Lucanicae’ which appears in the Roman recipe text Apicius in the 4th century on the chapter on foods made from chicken, fish, pork and peacock (Gayler 21). The book also provides a recipe for blood sausages made with blood which are stuffed into casings and poached in liquamen and wine. There are also records of sausage eating in China which date back to the Han dynasty (206BCE-220CE) (Peachey 20). This period shows a method of preserving meat through a high pole with two horizontal rods near the top from where meat strips and intestines were hung. There is also a record of Cantonese sausages, which were made from rose-flavoured vodka (Adeney 33). Historically, the type of weather influenced the sausages made by different countries as the climate and different tastes influenced the sausages made. In countries, which were dry and windy such as Spain and Italy there was a strong tradition of making cured sausages as the dry hair helped preserve the meat (Rebora 30). On the other hand, damp and cold climates in countries such as Germany and Britain made more of fresh sausages. Historically the sausage making was different from what is used now today since there was no equipment for making sausages as they are made today (Souhami 18). Sausage makers would salt the meats and organs or blood i...