50 Fun Facts About Sausages

From which Latin word meaning 'seasoned with salt' does 'sausage' ultimately derive?

It reached English in the mid-15th century, spelled sawsyge, via Old North French saussiche.

What are traditional sausage casings made from?

Industrial sausages now often use collagen, cellulose or even plastic instead.

Which Greek poet mentioned a kind of blood sausage in the Odyssey?

Aristophanes' play The Knights is about a sausage seller who ends up running Athens.

Which region of ancient Italy gave its name to the famous sausage lucanica?

The name lives on in Mediterranean sausages such as Greek loukaniko.

Which Byzantine emperor outlawed blood sausages in the 10th century after food poisonings?

Botulism itself is named from the Latin for sausage.

Why are British sausages nicknamed 'bangers'?

The tight skin shrinks in the pan; served with mash they make bangers and mash.

What is the minimum meat content for a product labelled 'pork sausages' in the UK?

For sausages of other meats the floor is 32%.

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

They usually use chipolatas alongside the roast turkey.

What is toad in the hole?

It appeared in print by 1762 as a way to stretch cheap meat in poor households.

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

The meat is chopped rather than minced and the seasoning is dominated by pepper.

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

It has no casing and is sliced from a block; it is rarely seen outside Scotland.

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

It is a delicacy in Stornoway and in Bury, Lancashire.

What was haggis traditionally encased in?

It contains sheep's heart, liver and lungs with oatmeal, suet and onion.

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

It is served at Burns suppers on or near his birthday, January 25.

Which British bakery chain sells sausage rolls by the hundreds of millions each year?

It sells about 2.5 million every week, roughly 140 million a year.

What gives Spanish chorizo its deep red colour and smokiness?

It comes in picante and dulce varieties depending on the pimentón used.

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

Its tiny Nürnberger Rostbratwurst, first recorded in 1567, weighs just 20 to 25 grams.

What is the characteristic herb of Franconian bratwurst?

The tiny Franconian city version is grilled over a beechwood fire and served six at a time on pewter.

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

The unsmoked veal sausage spoils fast, so it is eaten between breakfast and lunch.

What are weisswürste made from?

They are flavoured with parsley, lemon, mace, onion, ginger and cardamom.

Who invented currywurst at a West Berlin food stand in 1949?

She got ketchup and curry powder from British soldiers and patented her sauce as Chillup in 1951.

Roughly how many currywursts are eaten in Germany each year, per its Currywurst Museum?

About 70 million of them are eaten in Berlin alone.

Frankfurter Würstchen were traditionally handed out at what events?

They were served at coronations on the Römerberg from Maximilian II onward.

The word 'wiener' refers to which city?

Oddly, in Austria the same sausage is usually called a Frankfurter Würstl.

Which Coney Island pieman had a cart built in 1867 to boil sausages and keep buns warm?

He leased land for a permanent restaurant there in 1871.

Which cartoonist is wrongly credited with coining 'hot dog' around 1900?

His earliest documented use of the term is 1906, after it was already in print.

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

It takes place at the original Coney Island stand at Surf and Stillwell Avenues.

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

He was nicknamed 'The Tsunami' and has not competed since 2009 over a contract dispute.

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

It was briefly renamed the Frankmobile in 2023 before the old name returned.

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

The German-immigrant brothers served Chicago's German neighbourhoods.

Pepperoni is a variety of salami from which country?

Its name borrows peperoni, the Italian for bell peppers; it was on sale in New York by 1919.

What process, besides air-drying, defines salami?

It could be stored at room temperature, which made it a peasant staple across Europe.

Mortadella must contain at least what proportion of small cubes of pork fat?

The best-known version is mortadella Bologna PGI, and one theory traces the name to a mortar.

What is the minimum meat-or-fat content of South African boerewors by law?

The name means 'farmer's sausage'; no offal or mechanically separated meat is allowed.

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

In American English it usually means a coarse, U-shaped smoked sausage.

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

It spread in France in the 1960s and 70s with Algerian immigrants and pieds-noirs.

What are the traditional main ingredients of French andouille?

It is generally grey with a distinctive odour; andouillette is the smaller unsmoked cousin.

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

Old Italian cervella meant pigs' brains, once used in the recipe.

Where would you typically buy a bright red saveloy in Britain?

It is normally boiled and sometimes fried in batter.

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

Oddly, chipolatas contain none of it; food writer Alan Davidson called the usage a mystery.

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

Beef is the usual meat from Turkey to Kazakhstan.

What is Chinese lap cheong?

It looks like pepperoni but is much sweeter, and its lactobacilli give it a long shelf life.

In which country are pølsevogn hot dog stands so common that pølser count as a national dish?

Danish boiled sausages are famous for their bright red dyed casings.

The Swedish falukorv takes its name from which city?

German immigrant miners introduced the thick red-dyed sausage there.

What are Filipino sausages generally called in the northern Philippines?

They come sweet (hamonado) or garlicky (de recado); the southern regions say chorizo.

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

It usually includes bacon and potatoes.

What is the maximum fat content the USDA allows in the leanest defined sausage types?

Depending on the type the caps are 30%, 35% or 50% by weight.

Which Kenyan sausage combines goat and cow meat with tripe and cooked blood?

It is a common street food and party dish.

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

Epicharmus went one better and wrote a comedy simply titled The Sausage, a sign of how popular the food already was among the Greeks.

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

It sits alongside boudin blanc, boudin noir and andouillette in the French family of fresh sausages that need cooking.