Sausage has been an age long method of preservation as recorded by the primitive man, the ancient Egyptians and American Indians. Texts discovered from the times of the Ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia mentions stuffing meat into intestinal casings.
The first recognizable mention of this meat food is found in a Greek play called ‘The Orya’ or ‘The Sausage’ written about 500 B.C. Thereafter, the word Sausage occurs with frequency in Greek writings such as in the ‘Odyssey’ written by Homer in 830 B.C. Homer referenced sausage in the Odyssey as one of the favorite foods of the Greeks.
Homer mentions often in the Odyssey details of the slaughter of beef, goats and sheep. The prize of a sausage was awarded Odysseus when he defeated the sturdy beggar Iros in a boxing match. The sausage was described as a type of black pudding, stuffed with blood and fat and sizzled on the hearth.
Roman festive occasions were considered incomplete without sausage. Apicuis in his Roman Cookery describes puddings, loaves, and molded sausage like products.
Sausages were mentioned in AD 228 by Athenaeus in the Deipnosophists, the oldest known cookbook.
Sausage making evolved as an effort to economize and preserve meat which could not be consumed immediately after slaughter. This practice could be traced back to the ancient Greeks and Romans who made sausages which were usually plain and unspiced.
In the middle age, people started developing sausages with spices which led to modern sausage. At that time many European cities became known for their local sausages which were aptly named for their place of origins such as the bologna, named for Bologna, Italy and romano, named after Rome.
Many of the sausage products common in the USA can be traced to their origins in Europe and other parts of the world. In most cases, the type of product is related to environmental conditions within the geographical region in which they originated.
The invention of sausage
