Sausage Products

food products made of mechanically and physicochemically processed meat, to which certain other products have been added. The mechanical processing involves the removal of inedible and nutritionally worthless parts from the meat, which is then ground. Brining, curing, roasting, boiling, and smoking are methods of physicochemical processing.

In ancient Greece small sausages and stuffed pigs’ stomachs were served as hors d’oeuvres at feasts. Boiled sausages, small smoked sausages, and pork sausages (either ring or link) were used in ancient Rome. In the Middle Ages sausage products became a favorite dish. The 16th-century literary monument of Russian culture, the Domostroi, describes recipes and methods of preparing sausage products. At the end of the 19th century sausage products were produced in the large cities of Russia, chiefly in small workshops attached to sausage shops. Sausage products were processed on a commercial scale in 46 enterprises in a number of provinces, including Moscow, Kiev, Voronezh, Yaroslavl, and Kherson. At the beginning of 1917 there were about 2,500 sausage-making shops in Russia. They processed 50,000–60,000 tons of sausage products per year. In the USSR, 760 enterprises of the meat industry produced 2.4 million tons of sausage products in 1972 under approximately 200 different names.

There are a number of different types of sausages: boiled sausages (including frankfurters) and sardel’ki (small, fat sausages), semismoked sausages, smoked sausages, smoked and boiled sausages, liver sausages, Russian Zel’ts (trade name of a type of boiled sausages), and meat jellies. Smoked foods are also classified as sausage products. Lean beef, pork, lard, and more rarely, mutton and poultry are the raw materials for sausages. Where it is customary to eat horse meat, sausages are also made from it. Meat byproducts such as liver, brains, heart, and rumen are used for liver sausage, Russian Zel’ts, and meat jellies. The alimentary blood of slaughtered animals is used in processing blood sausages.

In order to enrich the sausage stuffing with complete proteins, alimentary blood plasma, whole and skim milk, milk protein, and eggs are added. The addition of sugar, spices, and seasonings (for example, pepper, nutmeg, pistachio nuts, and garlic) improves the flavor of sausages. To preserve the red color of the meat, a weak solution of sodium nitrite is added to the mixture. Both intestinal and synthetic casings (made from protein, cellulose, and polymeric membranes) are used to give sausage products a definite shape and to keep them clean. However, some products are made without casings.

In manufacturing sausage, the meat is separated from the bones, and the tendons, cartilage, and fat (in beef) are removed. The meat is then cut into pieces, salted, ground into forcemeat and mixed with pieces of lard and other ingredients. The sausage casings are filled with forcemeat, tied with string, and suspended so that the stuffing will settle. After the stuffing has settled, boiled and semismoked sausages are browned (hot smoking), then boiled and cooled. Semismoked sausages are smoked again after they have been cooled. Unlike semismoked sausages, dry-smoked sausages are not boiled but are smoked and dried after the stuffing has settled.

For liver sausages and Russian Zel’ts, the stuffing is prepared from cooked byproducts, the casing is filled, and the sausages are cooked again and cooled. In manufacturing smoked foods, salted chunks of meat are macerated, smoked, and dried. Cooked smoked products are cooked and cooled after smoking. The assembly line is widely used in the manufacture of sausage products. Canned sausage products are also produced.