Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Sausages

Starting point is 00:00:00 For thousands of years, people have taken some of an animal's least desirable parts and turned them into a culinary tradition found almost everywhere on earth. The basic idea is remarkably simple, but different cultures turned it into thousands of distinct foods shaped by climate, religion, preservation techniques, and local taste. It can be dried, smoked, fermented, or even cook fresh. Learn more about sausages, and exactly how the sausage is made on this episode of Everything Everywhere daily. Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation of a lifetime. I wonder if my

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Starting point is 00:01:29 Or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight. Our new double espresso with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on Nisproso. Um. Sausage is one of humanity's oldest processed foods. It almost certainly did not have a single inventor. Instead, sausage making seems to have developed wherever people slaughtered animals and needed a practical way to use meat quickly, preserve it, and make tougher or less desirable portions

Starting point is 00:02:03 more palatable. At its most basic, a sausage is just chopped or ground meat mixed with salt and seasoning, usually packed into a casing. From that simple idea came thousands of variations. Some sausages are meant to be eaten fresh. Others are cooked or smoked, and still others are fermented or dried, and can last for months without any refrigeration. The exact origin of sausage making is impossible to establish because it predates written history. The technique probably emerged naturally from two discoveries.

Starting point is 00:02:39 One, people learn that salt slowed meat spoilage, and two, they realized that cleaned animal intestines made convenient containers for chopped meat. Sausage solved several important problems for early people. In addition to preserving and storing meat, sausage also let people use every part of the animal. Any extra bits could be put into sausage, ensuring that nothing went to waste. And this was extremely important in a world where calories were scarce. Some claims suggest sausage making existed in Mesopotamia by the 4th,3.

Starting point is 00:03:14 millennium BC, although evidence for precise dates is uncertain. Babylonian tablets from the second millennium BC describe meat preparations that resemble stuffed or processed meats. Early historical records from China document an ancient form of sausage in the 6th century BC. Homer's Odyssey contains references to sausage-like food, and other Greek writers also mentioned sausages. So sausage-making was well-established in the Greek world long before the rise of Rome. The Romans became enthusiastic sausage makers. They produced several varieties using pork, organs, and other parts of animals. Some were fresh while others were smoked or preserved.

Starting point is 00:03:55 The Roman cookbook traditionally associated with a peaches, contains recipes for seasoned, stuffed meat products. Roman sausage makers had already developed many of the principles that remain familiar today. Meat was chopped, seasoned, and packed into cleaned intestines. sausages could also be an inexpensive food. Romans could turn trimming an organ meat into something flavorable and portable. This helped sausage become popular for both rich and poor alike. As Rome expanded, Roman culinary traditions spread throughout Europe. Local populations combine these techniques with their own animals and seasoning. And over time, sausage making became intensely regional. The enormous number of European sausages is partly due to

Starting point is 00:04:40 to geography. Before refrigeration, climate-shaped how meat could be preserved. In cool northern regions, sausages could remain fresh longer during the winter. Smoking became especially important in areas with abundant forests and fireplaces. In warmer parts of Europe, drying and fermentation became more important. Salt reduced available moisture, while beneficial microorganisms produced acids that discourage dangerous bacteria. A sausage could gradually become firm enough to survive for months. Local agriculture mattered as well. Pig-raising regions naturally developed pork sausages,

Starting point is 00:05:18 and pastoral areas often produced lamb or beef sausages. Spices also became geographical signatures. Garlic became important in many Mediterranean sausages. Black pepper became associated with several Italian varieties. Paprika transformed the sausages of Spain and Hungary after peppers arrived from the Americas. The end result was that sausage began. and functioning almost like a culinary map.

Starting point is 00:05:44 One other popular sausage type, which is still popular in some parts of the world today, is blood sausage. The blood of an animal was difficult to store and preserve, yet it had many calories and nutrients. Blood sausage was one of the best methods of preservation. Today, black pudding in England and blue-to-verse in Germany continue this tradition. While Europe became known for sausages, they were not unique to Europe. Asia's sausage history is far older and more diverse than it is sometimes assumed. Sausage making did not simply arrive there from Europe.

Starting point is 00:06:20 China in particular has an ancient tradition of preserved ground and chopped meats. Chinese-style fermented sausages have been produced for thousands of years. The best-known family of Chinese sausages is Lai Chong. The term is often just translated as Chinese sausage, although it describes a broad family rather than one standard-eastern recipe. The classic Cantonese version is usually made from pork and fat. It's salted, sweetened, seasoned, stuffed into narrow casings and then dried. Unlike many European sausages, Lai Chong is often noticeably sweet. Drying rather than heavy smoking is usually the primary

Starting point is 00:06:59 preservation technique. Korea similarly had meat preparation that involved stuffing intestines, although they developed differently from European sausages. The best example is Suman Korean Sundae. Korean Sundae is traditionally made by stuffing pig intestines with a mixture that can include blood, noodles, or cranes. It's therefore more closely related to the world's blood sausage traditions than to something like a brotwurst. Southeast Asia develops some of the world's most interesting fermented sausages. Thailand has Sai Croc-Isan, associated with the northeastern region known as Isan. Pork is mixed with cook rice and seasonings before being stuffed into casings. The rice is actually important because it provides carbohydrates for lactic

Starting point is 00:07:46 acid bacteria. As the sausage sits, fermentation generates acidity and produces its characteristic sour flavor. Among the pastoral peoples of Central Asia, sausage developed around horses as well as sheep and cattle. One of the most distinctive products is Kazi. It's particularly associated with Kazakhstan and neighboring Turkic cultures. Kazi traditional traditional consist of horse meat and fat stuffed into intestines. It can then be boiled, dried, and sometimes smoked. The ingredients make Kazi fundamentally different from the pork-based sausages that dominate much of Europe. Its ingredients reflect the horse-centered culture of the Eurasian steppe. North Africa has the continent's oldest and most extensive sausage traditions. Sheep, goats, and

Starting point is 00:08:33 cattle were domesticated in northeastern Africa thousands of years ago, with livestock present in Egypt by at least the 6 millennium BC. This created the conditions for processed meat traditions very early, although we can't identify a particular ancient Egyptian product as the direct ancestor of a modern sausage. The development of North African sausage was strongly influenced by the Islamic conquest beginning in the 7th century. Pork largely disappeared from all Muslim food traditions, so sausages were made from lamb or beef. South of the Sahara Desert, sausage tradition

Starting point is 00:09:09 are generally less prominent historically than dried, smoked, or roasted whole pieces of of meat. And there are several reasons for this. In tropical climates, stuffing moist ground meat into intestines can accelerate spoilage unless the sausage is immediately cooked or aggressively preserved. Pre-Columbian Americans certainly made preserved and processed meat products, and there's scattered reports of meat being packed into animal skins or intestines. But there's no strong evidence that cased sausages, was a widespread or important culinary tradition in the Americas before European contact. During the medieval period, slaughtering pigs became an important seasonal activity throughout Europe.

Starting point is 00:09:51 Animals were frequently killed in late autumn or early winter when colder temperatures prevented spoilage. The most desirable cuts may be salted or roasted, but other meat went into sausages. Fat was valuable rather than something to avoid because it provided calories and improved texture. Sausage making became associated with professional butchers in growing European towns. Butcher guilds developed rules governing production, ingredients, and commerce. And individual cities gradually became famous for particular sausages. This explains why so many sausage names are geographical. Frankfurt gave its name to the Frankfurter.

Starting point is 00:10:31 Bologna became associated with Mortadella Bologna, or what we might call Bologna. Vienna eventually became connected to, connected with the weiner, because the German name for Vienna is Vien. Regional competition also encouraged specialization. As a sausage was no longer simply preserved meat, it was a source of civic pride. There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of types of sausages, and it would be impossible to go over all of them individually. But it is possible to categorize sausages into several broad categories. Fresh sausages are raw and must be cooked before eating. Examples include Bratworths, Italian sausage, and many breakfast sausages.

Starting point is 00:11:14 Cooked sausages are heat-treated during production and are often ready to eat. Examples may include mortadella, liverwurst, and many types of bologna. Dry sausages are preserved by removing moisture, often over several weeks or months. Examples include salami and Spanish torreso. Smoke sausages are exposed to wood smoke for flavor and preservation, and examples include Polish kiyabasa and French Andoui. Finally, fermented sausages use beneficial bacteria to produce acid, which helps preserve the meat and give it a tangy flavor.

Starting point is 00:11:48 Examples include Genoa Salami and summer sausage. Modern sausages are mostly the same as traditional ones with a few major innovations. One is the introduction of artificial casings such as collagen or cellulose. Some industrial sausages are produced in plastic casings that are removed before sale. Industrial equipment also allowed meat to be chopped far more finely than traditional hand techniques permitted. This led to the widespread production of emulsified or finely ground sausages. Frankfurters and many forms of bologna belong to this category. Now you might have noticed that I haven't mentioned one type of sausage yet, the good old American hot dog.

Starting point is 00:12:32 And you might have wondered at some point, what exactly is the difference between a half? hot dog, a Wiener, and a Frankfurter. For all practical purposes, they are synonymous today and mean the exact same thing. However, their origins are slightly different. As I mentioned before, Frankfurters originated in Frankfurt and Wieners originated in Vienna. Traditionally, a Frankfurt sausage was a thin, finely ground pork sausage that was smoked and cooked. The classic Viennese sausage, Vener Verstchen was traditionally made from a mixture of pork and beef. German immigrants brought sausages to the United States in large numbers during the 19th century. Long, thin sausages were sometimes jokingly called dachshund sausages because their shape resembled

Starting point is 00:13:24 the long-bodied German dog. By the late 19th century, dog had become slang for sausage. Part of the joke came from reoccurring suspicions that cheap sausages might content. dog meat. Whether the accusation was actually true mattered less than the fact that people joked about it. The phrase, hot dog was in print by the 1890s. One of the earliest known American examples appears in college slang from that decade where hot dog refers to a hot sausage. A hot dog is really the American serving style and only by extension the sausage itself. It usually means a Frankfurter or weener served in a split bun.

Starting point is 00:14:08 Over time, Americans began using hot dog for both the bun and the sausage inside of it. There's a famous story that a New York cartoonist, D.A. Dorgan, coined the term after seeing vendors selling Daxhund sausages at a baseball game, and unable to spell Doxhund labeled them hot dogs. It's a great story, but it's almost certainly false. The term had already appeared in print before the support. posed cartoon, and no copy of the cartoon has ever been found. Sausages began as a practical solution to a basic problem, how to use as much of an animal as possible and preserve the meat before it spoiled. But over thousands of years, that simple

Starting point is 00:14:50 idea spread, evolved, and adapted to local climates, religions, ingredients, and tastes. And the result is an extraordinary variety of foods. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible. And I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast.

Starting point is 00:15:23 And links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you two can have it read in the show. Thank you.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The History of Sausages

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