Sausage: A Global History (Edible)

Gary Allen’s delightful new book, Sausage: A Global History, tells the fascinating back-story of sausages and how they evolved into the tasty, flavorful packages found in cuisines around the world. As Allen duly notes, “today sausages are equally at home in street vendors’ carts and in white-tablecloth dining establishments.”Long ago, our ancestors figured out that the intestines, stomachs, bladders and skins of animals could be useful containers for all the scraps of meat and organs that might otherwise be wasted. So, while it is true that sausage may have started out as “the efficient use of every part of a slaughtered beast,” Allen colorfully describes how they progressed to become “the darling of diners – daring and otherwise.”Although pork and beef are the ubiquitous varieties, lots of meats have been made into sausages, including lamb, goat, horsemeat, offal, poultry, seafood, and even elephant. Some cultures even have vegetable and grain sausages that predate the modern vegetarian craze.Allen covers in detail all the diverse and interesting ingredients that provide flavor and texture to these juicy parcels. He discusses some that might seem kind of unusual, including almonds, pistachios, walnuts, pine nuts, cinnamon and nutmeg, as well as more commonly recognized sausage flavorings such as sage, fennel, and garlic. Many of these combinations are a result of the meshing together of various cuisines as they conquered and/or developed trade routes with other regions. Local ingredients were integrated with those from exotic locales to create unique taste sensations.Sausage cooking and preserving methods are as varied as the ingredients, which results in a rainbow of hues for the finished product. A colorful lot, sausages range in color from the very pale German Weisswurst, which is white because it is unsmoked and contains no nitrites that would turn it pink, to very dark smoked and blood sausages.Blood is an ingredient that shows up in the earliest sausage references, reflecting the ‘no-waste’ attitudes of the past. Pigs blood is most commonly used – in addition to providing the sausage with a dark color, it also flavors the sausage. Although many might be squeamish about giving it a try, Allen notes that blood sausages are alive and well - part of a trend that is linked to the Slow Food movement, as well as a desire for folks to show respect for the animals we eat, and to explore the taste of history that would otherwise be lost – a way of reviving the kind of frugality that led to the invention of sausages.Chock-full of historical nuggets and informative references to the present day, this book is a mouthwatering look at this important food that has stood the test of time. Descriptive photos and illustrations are peppered throughout. For those hungering for a taste, Allen provides a selection of sausage recipes – the Orecchiette with Broccoli Rabe and Sausage is definitely on my list of those to try!

Another title that sounds like a spoof, this is a serious book about sausage. It's a rather short book even for this series, but sausage fanciers would be mollified by a number of pages of recipes at the end. The illustrations are as usual in this series. excellent.Allen says that sausage always has its protein cut up in some way. Other than that, it's a loose definition, not just forced meat encased in a natural casing such as intestines. Casings include hog intestines, sheep stomachs, even, says Allen, the air bladder of croakers.I knew sausage from what might be called the Wisconsin palate, which includes kielbasa (Polish) and bratwurst (German) and the American hot dog. Turns out that sausage has been made from pig's brain, carp, horsemeat, yak blood, squid, dog meat, goat, sheep lung, donkey meat, wild boar, and apparently any kind of meat, many kinds of internal organs and blood. Usually a sausage has 20-30% fat. There is sausage in very many world cuisines.My two favorite chapters were Chapter 4, "Sausage from Everywhere Else" and Chapter 5, "Technology and the Modern Sausage." Everywhere else means non-European, and they are everywhere! There's also a lot of cross-cuisine. Technology has made the modern sausage extremely variable, and its contents is often a way to market pieces and parts not easily sellable elsewise. The consumers of hot dogs might not want to know what goes into one.

It's a decent little book in a series dedicated to food and drink - a good overview, some modern recipes, a fair number of photos and historic advertisements. It's a *much* deeper dive into the history than any other charcuterie book I've read.The second chapter (the title still makes me snerk - "Some Historical Sausages and the Links Between Them") starts with a couple allusions from The Iliad and goes forward. There are sausage recipes from some of the easily accessible works (Scappi's Opera, Das Book von Guter Spise, Le Menagier de Paris) but also some of the more obscure European and Middle Eastern works.While it's a thin book, it's a useful one for anyone interested in more than the standard "here are today's recipes from around the world" charcuterie books.

Loved this book and got it as a gift for my Dad who is a butcher and makes sausages! Great find. Highly recommend