Why Make Your Own?

I may have posted this before, but I originally got interested in making sausage after I started collecting old cookbooks. One in particular, the Picayune's Creole Cookbook (2nd ed. - 1910), contains recipes for forgotten Creole sausages. Most people know Cajun andouille and boudin, but few are familiar with chaurice, and I know of no one that makes Creole saucisses or saucissons. My fist attempt to make sausage was chaurice. I was stunned by the difference in quality that I could produce at home and began to realize how poor the quality was in most store-bought sausage. I was surprised at how much "stuff" was in store-bought sausage. I appreciated the simplicity of homemade sausage; meat, fat, seasoning, salt.

If your experience with sausages is similar to mine, you may be interested in the book I am currently reading, Polish Sausages, by Stanley Marianski (2009). The book begins with a history of polish sausagemaking, explaining that the Poles originally learned the craft from the Romans. They then spent several centuries perfecting recipes for the many regional varieties through trade associations and unions. After World War II, the communist Polish government established a commission to formally document the traditional recipes. They identified and defined over 100 specific varieties in a book that was only distributed to licensed union butchers. After the fall of communism in 1989, most butchers absconded with their copies of the book. Mr. Marianski obtained a copy and has translated the standards, methodologies, and recipes for over 60 traditional Polish products.

I am still reading the book, but thus far I am impressed with the high level of detail and content. Of particular interest to me was a passage where the author compares a traditional recipe to the ingredient lists for four brands of store bought Polish sausage. He goes on to say that the only chemical or additive the Polish government allowed was saltpeter (Potassium Nitrate) and that there were severe punishments for butchers who used other additives or inferior meats in there sausages. The author notes two cases where butchers who used inferior meats were sentenced to death and executed. He concludes the section by saying, "if today's recipes and manufacturing methods were somehow introduced to the meat inspectors in 1959-1989 Poland, there wouldn't be enough jail cells to accommodate meat plant managers."

It is amazing to realize that the basic recipes for sausages and cured meats are ones that worked just fine literally for centuries and that in the last 30-50 years they have changed radically, usually at great expense to the quality. If you are a purist at heart, I strongly recommend this book.

David