A History of the Sausage

SAUSAGES THOUGH THE CENTURIES

* The history of the sausage starts at least 5,000 years ago in Sumeria (modern day Iraq).

* By 900 BC sausages had become the popcorn of the ancient Greek theatre, available from sausage sellers in the aisles.

* In 320 AD the Roman Emperor Constantinus I and the Catholic Church banned sausage eating because of links to pagan festivals! This led to sausages going underground until the ban was lifted.

* The sausage was in trouble again nine hundred years ago. Emperor Leo V declared that sausage makers would be ‘severely scourged, smoothly shaved and banished from our realm forever’. It is not known what sausage sellers had done to cause such offence.

* It was in the reign of Charles I that sausages were divided into links for the first time.

* Apparently legendary highwayman, Dick Turpin, was known to moonlight as a butcher making sausages from the finest meats hunted in Epping Forest.

* Sausages were nicknamed bangers during the Second World War because when they were fried they tended to explode with a bang!

* Otto von Bismarck once remarked: ‘laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made’.

* Henry V stated: ‘War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard’.

Posted By: jafski, May 23, 15:34:17