The making of the sausage is a very old technique for production and preservation of food. Sausages are made of ground meat as well as offal, fat, herbs; spices and preservatives that are stuffed in a membrane and are kept either boiled or smoked.
By tradition, the membrane is the intestine of the animal; cellulose, collagen or synthetic materials can also be used. The producers use meat from different parts of the carcass, offal, blood, and fat and preserve for long shelf life. The sausage is one of the oldest ready-made foods. It is believed that the Sumerians first produced it about 3000 BC. The Chinese sausage is mentioned in 589 BC and was made from lamb and goat’s meat. Homer talks about a type of sausage in The Odyssey, and we have information that tells us that the sausage was loved by the Greeks and the Romans.
It is well known that our Greek for fathers were the original connoisseurs of fine food and wine. From Athenaus in the late 2nd century AD (Greek), who wrote Deipnosophists, and Apicius a 1st century (Roman) who is attributed to early cook books that the Greeks knew methods and recipes of sausage making very early on. Via the Roman conquests of Europe, these ideas spread to the rest of the world. It was during the Byzantine years that the blood sausage (αιματίας) ematίas arrived – and during the 37th Synod that it was banned.
Considered a leftover from the worship of idols, it is possible to conclude that the sausages of the ancient Greeks were less like the commercial sausages we know today and more like the ematies made today during the Christmas period in places such as Crete, Corfu, and in some parts of the Peloponnese using finely cut meat, pligouri or rice, vinegar and pork blood.
Each geographical area in the world today has it’s own version of sausages. They are predominantly made form pork meat, but there is the use of lamb, beef, turkey, chicken and game. A sausage can be in the form of salami that can be eaten as is or raw and fresh that needs cooking. It can be incorporated into a variety of cooked recipe and a prime example is the pizza. It’s wonderful in omelettes, on barbecues, cut into small pieces as a meze with beer or a shot of ouzo. Boiled sausages are made form fresh meat and then boiled.
They are consumed immediately or frozen. This category includes sausages that have liver in their recipes. The boiled/smoked variety (that are first boiled and then smoked) can be consumed hot or cold and are kept in the refrigerator. It is in this category that mortadella belongs. The fresh sausages have to be used immediately and these days we allow our butcher to make them for us.
The dried sausages are made from fresh meat, and then dried; they are usually eaten cold and can have a long life expectancy. In this category we find salami, and peperoni. This category needs no cooking although we do sometimes put them in special recipes. They last a long time as they are dried with salt and with particular category of bacteria that is all mixed with the fresh meat. Next time your in Athens take walk down Athinas Street where the central market is and in a side street there you will see many shops that specialise in cold meats and sausages.
The majority of cold meat making today is done in northern Greece, because that is where harmony with natural conditions exist for the production and maturation of traditional meat products, such as pastourma and soutzouki, following the traditional recipes that require a high maturation and Greek home grown herbs.