50 Fun Facts About Sausages

The word 'sausage' ultimately derives from a Latin word meaning seasoned with what?

Salt: Latin salsus, 'salted', named the way chopped scraps were preserved before stuffing, and the same root gave English sauce, salsa and salad.

What are traditional sausage casings made from?

Cleaned intestines, usually from pigs or sheep, are the classic skin; a 'skinless' hot dog is cooked inside a cellulose casing that is peeled off before it is packed.

Which ancient Greek poet compared a restless hero to a blood sausage being turned over a fire?

Homer: in the Odyssey, Odysseus lies awake plotting revenge on his wife's suitors, tossing like a stomach stuffed with fat and blood beside a blazing fire.

Greek loukaniko and Bulgarian lukanka both descend from a sausage the Romans named after what?

A region of Italy: Roman writers said soldiers learned the spiced, smoked lucanica from the people of Lucania, in the south, and the name then spread east through Greek.

Which illness takes its name from the Latin word for sausage?

Botulism comes from botulus, Latin for sausage: German doctors first traced the illness to badly made blood sausages and called it sausage poisoning.

Why are British sausages said to be nicknamed 'bangers'?

They tend to burst when cooked: sausages bulked out with water during wartime meat shortages are said to have popped in the pan, though the word's origin isn't certain.

Which herb traditionally dominates the seasoning of Lincolnshire's famous bangers?

Sage gives the Lincolnshire sausage its taste, yet a bid to protect the name failed in 2012: ministers ruled its link to the county wasn't strong enough.

What is the Christmas side dish of small sausages wrapped in bacon called?

Pigs in blankets: in Britain the blanket is bacon, usually around a chipolata, while the American dish of almost the same name wraps the sausage in pastry instead.

What is toad in the hole?

Sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding batter came late: the dish began as a way to stretch scraps of meat, and early recipes called for beef, kidneys or even pigeon.

Which English county's sausage is sold in a long flat coil up to 50 centimetres long?

Cumberland sausage won protected status in 2011: only sausage made in Cumbria with at least 80% meat may be sold as Traditional Cumberland sausage.

What is Scotland's square, casing-free breakfast slice called?

Lorne sausage is popularly said to be named after the comedian Tommy Lorne, but butchers were already advertising it in the 1890s, when he was still a small child.

Which non-meat ingredient, in high proportion, sets British black pudding apart?

Cereal such as oatmeal bulks out the blood and fat. Each September in Ramsbottom, contestants hurl black puddings at a stack of Yorkshire puddings in a world championship.

What was haggis traditionally encased in?

A sheep's stomach held the animal's minced heart, liver and lungs, and the lungs are why the United States shut out traditional haggis in 1971, under a rule against lungs in food.

Which poet's 1786 'Address to a Haggis' made it Scotland's national dish?

Robert Burns's poem is recited over the dish at Burns suppers each 25 January, and the speaker plunges a knife into the haggis at the line about cutting it up.

Which British high-street chain sells more than a million sausage rolls every week?

Greggs launched a vegan sausage roll in 2019 that sold so fast it had to raise production, and the bakery chain then set about making vegan versions of its other bestsellers.

What gives Spanish chorizo its deep red colour?

Smoked paprika, or pimentón: in La Vera the peppers are dried over oak smoke before grinding, which is why the sausage tastes smoky as well as looking red.

In which German city is bratwurst first documented, in 1313?

Nuremberg's finger-sized bratwursts won EU protection in 2003, so only sausages made inside the city limits to a fixed recipe may carry its name.

What is the characteristic herb of Franconian bratwurst?

Marjoram is so bound up with German sausage-making that one of its everyday German names is Wurstkraut, literally 'sausage herb'.

A Bavarian saying holds that weisswurst must not be allowed to hear what?

The noon church bells: the rule is usually traced to the days before refrigeration, when a sausage made fresh at dawn without smoking or curing would not keep past midday.

What are weisswürste made from?

Minced veal and pork fatback fill a skin that isn't eaten: the traditional way, called zuzeln, is to bite open one end and suck the meat out.

Who is credited with inventing currywurst at a West Berlin food stand in 1949?

Herta Heuwer is said to have got her curry powder from the British in occupied Berlin, though Hamburg disputes the honour, insisting its own sausage sellers got there two years earlier.

Which German carmaker makes its own currywurst, complete with an official part number?

Volkswagen has made the sausage at its Wolfsburg plant since 1973; when bosses took it off a canteen menu in 2021, ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder protested and it was reinstated with apologies.

Frankfurter Würstchen were traditionally handed out at what events?

Imperial coronations were held in Frankfurt from 1562, and while the new emperor dined indoors, the crowd on the Römerberg square got a roast ox and the city's sausages.

The word 'wiener' refers to which city?

Vienna, Wien in German, named the wiener, yet Austrians call the same sausage a Frankfurter: a butcher trained in Frankfurt is said to have brought the recipe to their capital.

Nathan Handwerker worked for which Coney Island restaurateur before undercutting him with five-cent hot dogs?

Charles Feltman is said to have started with a pie cart fitted with a stove to boil sausages and a compartment to keep buns warm, one of several claims to the first hot dog.

A debunked legend says 'hot dog' was coined by a cartoonist unable to spell which word?

Dachshund: the tale has Tad Dorgan sketching barking 'dachshund sausages' at a ballgame and dodging the spelling, but no such cartoon has been found and the term was already in print.

On what date is the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest held each year?

July 4 suits the legend that four immigrants began the contest in 1916 to prove their patriotism, a story its publicist admitted in 2010 he had made up in the 1970s.

Which Japanese eater won six straight Nathan's contests from 2001 to 2006?

Takeru Kobayashi ate 50 hot dogs on his 2001 debut, about double the old record, by snapping each frank in half and dunking the buns in water.

What is the name of Oscar Mayer's hot-dog-shaped promotional vehicle, first built in 1936?

The Wienermobile was renamed the Frankmobile in 2023 to promote an all-beef frank, but the change lasted just four months before the old name came back.

Which sausages did the Mayer brothers sell at their Chicago meat market in 1883?

Bratwurst and liverwurst suited the German neighbourhoods around the shop, and in 1904 the brothers' firm began stamping its name on its meat, then unheard of among butchers.

Despite its Italian-sounding name, pepperoni is a variety of salami created in which country?

United States: pepperoni is an Italian-American creation, and no salami in Italy goes by the name, because peperoni there simply means bell peppers.

What process, besides air-drying, defines salami?

Fermentation: bacteria turn sugars in the meat into lactic acid, souring it enough to keep at room temperature, which made salami a peasant staple long before fridges.

Mortadella, the pink sausage studded with cubes of white pork fat, comes from which Italian city?

Bologna gave mortadella its protected name, and the American lunch meat called bologna, or baloney, is its simpler descendant.

Boerewors, the spiced 'farmer's sausage' grilled at a braai, originated in which country?

South Africa protects the name by law: boerewors must be at least 90% meat, so cheaper, bulked-out coils have to be sold as braaiwors instead.

Kielbasa is simply the word for 'sausage' in which language?

Polish: in Poland kiełbasa covers dozens of sausages, from thin kabanos to pale biała, while Americans use the word for just one smoked, U-shaped kind.

Merguez is a spicy fresh sausage from which region's cuisine?

The Maghreb: merguez is lamb or beef reddened with harissa or chilli, and it caught on in France when pieds-noirs and Algerian immigrants opened shops and restaurants there.

What are the traditional main ingredients of French andouille?

Pig chitterlings and tripe give it a strong smell; in Brittany's Guémené style the intestines are threaded one over another, so each slice shows concentric rings, unlike Louisiana's meaty Cajun andouille.

The words cervelat and saveloy ultimately derive from the Latin for which body part?

Brain: dictionaries trace saveloy through French cervelas to Italian cervellata, from cervello, because the sausage was originally made with pigs' brains.

A bright red saveloy is a staple of which kind of British takeaway?

A fish and chip shop is its usual home; in north-east England it also fills a 'saveloy dip', a bun dunked in gravy and layered with stuffing and pease pudding.

The name 'chipolata' derives from an Italian word for a dish containing what?

Onions: the name comes via French from Italian cipollata, an onion dish, yet chipolatas contain none, a jump food writer Alan Davidson called a mystery.

Sujuk is a dry, spicy beef sausage of which broad culinary region?

Anatolia and the Balkans share it because it spread with Ottoman rule, which is why Albanian suxhuk and Bulgarian sudzhuk are still the Turkish word sucuk.

What is Chinese lap cheong?

A sweet dried pork sausage, lap cheong is cured with sugar and rose-scented liquor, and a few slices steamed on top are enough to flavour a whole pot of rice.

Pølsevogn sausage wagons, selling bright red pølser, are a street-food tradition in which country?

Denmark: legend says day-old sausages once had to be dyed red as a warning, yet the red ones became the favourites; Copenhagen's first six wagons rolled out in 1921.

Sweden's falukorv sausage began as a by-product of which industry, which slaughtered oxen for hide ropes?

Copper mining at Falun ran on ox-hide ropes, so oxen arrived by the convoy, and German miners taught the Swedes to turn the leftover smoked meat into the sausage that bears the town's name.

What are Filipino sausages generally called in the northern Philippines?

Longganisa, from Spanish longaniza, is a breakfast staple, fried and served with garlic rice and an egg as longsilog; Visayan speakers further south say chorizo instead.

What is the Dublin dish of sausages boiled in a stew without browning called?

Coddle means to cook gently below the boil; Dubliners made it on Thursdays to use up sausages and rashers before meatless Catholic Fridays, and it was reputedly a favourite of Jonathan Swift.

Which seed gives American-style Italian sausage its signature liquorice-like flavour?

Fennel is so central that US federal rules require any sausage labelled Italian to contain it, or its flavour twin anise, along with salt, pepper and no more than 35% fat.

Which Kenyan sausage is filled with minced meat, intestine and cooked blood, then roasted over coals?

Mutura comes from the Kikuyu lands of central Kenya, where it is made for gatherings such as bridewealth ceremonies and is now a common street food.

Which Aristophanes comedy centres on a sausage vendor who is elected leader?

The Knights took first prize in 424 BC: its sausage seller topples a caricature of the politician Cleon by proving even more shameless than he is.

Instead of a casing, the small flattened French crépinette is wrapped in what?

Caul fat, the lacy membrane around a pig's organs, is crépine in French, which gives the crépinette its name; British faggots are wrapped the same way.