A sausage can legally contain more than 100 percent meat
Sausage makers can print meat contents above 100 percent on a label, and it is not a trick. If drying removes enough water, the meat that went in outweighs the finished sausage. That quirk sits on top of a food with Akkadian, Greek and Chinese roots, invented to waste nothing at slaughter.
Sausages exist because butchery produces leftovers. Traditional makers salted scraps, organs, blood and fat so they would keep, then packed them into the animal's cleaned intestines, which is where the familiar tube shape comes from. Curing, drying, smoking and fermentation all extend shelf life, and some cured or smoked types need no fridge at all, whereas most fresh ones must be chilled or frozen until they meet the pan.
The idea is ancient. An Akkadian cuneiform tablet describes intestines filled with a kind of forcemeat. Homer mentions a blood sausage in the Odyssey, and in Aristophanes' comedy The Knights a sausage seller ends up elected leader. Ancient Italy's star was lucanica from Lucania, now Basilicata, a name that survives in Mediterranean sausages today. Under Nero, sausages were tied to the Lupercalia festival. In the early tenth century the Byzantine emperor Leo VI banned blood sausages after outbreaks of food poisoning. China's lap cheong goes back to the period 420 to 589, and its modern version lasts a long time thanks to so many lactobacilli that plenty of people find it sour.
The English word appeared in the mid-1400s as sawsyge, borrowed from Old North French saussiche. Behind that lies Vulgar Latin salsica, from a word meaning salted, a reminder that salt was always the point.
Modern casings are often collagen, cellulose or even plastic rather than gut, especially in factory production, though some firms in the southern United States still use hog or sheep intestine. Recipes may add breadcrumbs or grains as cheap fillers, along with spices, apple or leek. Regulators sometimes step in: the US Department of Agriculture caps fat, depending on the defined type, at 30, 35 or 50 percent by weight. Plant-based vegetarian and vegan sausages have spread widely this century.
Source: Sausage
