Ah, the great British banger.
Or the lovely salami.
Or the battered saveloy.
Hang on, just what is a sausage? And why do they taste so good?
The concept of sausages goes back to antiquity -
stuffing animal guts with a meat, fish or sweet batter mixture
was an obvious and practical way
to make easily cooked, transportable food.
Originally, they were seen as small puddings –
a large pudding was a haggis,
done in a stomach, rather than a length of gut -
and, like puddings, they were often boiled rather than fried.
The French word for sausage, boudin,
even gave us British the word ‘pudding’,
since early puddings were sausages,
and sausages really were a type of pudding.
Sometimes they were smoked or air dried to keep through winter.
Everywhere, though, for those who could afford it,
a spiced fresh meat sausage was a pretty staple item.
Even for those who couldn’t afford good meat and fine spice,
sausages were about from very early on.
There was a play called The Sausage Seller written in the 5th Century BC,
and already then the lower-grade sausage
had a whiff of uncertain meat
disguised with judicious sauce about it.
In the medieval era, northern, wetter climes such as the UK
developed a speciality in fresh meat sausages,
to be cooked before eating.
Elsewhere, in dry climates such as the Mediterranean
which had good, stiff breezes and mountains,
dried or smoked sausages were more popular.
There they would cure properly,
and not simply go green as they would in Britain.
There were still mixtures with fish, fruit and blood –
black pudding for example –
but as the centuries rolled on,
most European sausages became based on a mixture
of pork, pork fat and flavourings.
They were not posh, and by the 18th Century
they rarely appeared at the dinner tables of the wealthy -
though they happily ate them as suppers and snacks.
But they were very popular,
and available for almost every possible budget.
Mass production became possible by the mid-Victorian times,
and even cheaper sausages came out, with a hefty filler of bread or rusk.
Saveloys in particular gained a reputation
for being based on off-cuts and filler,
or indeed, horsemeat and sawdust in some people’s view.
Then, as now, the dirt-cheap versions
rubbed shoulders with the more expensive ones –
until the First World War,
when meat shortages meant that no-one got much meat in their casings.
One theory as to why they became known as bangers,
shortly after the war,
is that the level of filler meant they banged and popped when fried.
However, it’s just as likely to come from their shape,
which resembled shell casings,
not least as they were still often boiled to cook them.
Normally, they are cylindrical,
but they can, on occasion,
be square like a Lorne.
Today, eighty-five percent of Brits regularly consume sausages,
plain, as bangers and mash or as in toad-in-the-hole –
though globally it’s the cocktail sausage which is the king,
for a bite-sized piece of porky glory.
Small or large, contents as you wish,
we’ve had sausages for thousands of years,
and they are clearly here to stay.