Sausage

A sausage is a meat product usually made from ground pork, beef or poultry mixed with salt, spices and other flavorings, sometimes with grains or breadcrumbs as fillers, and is typically cylindrical and enclosed in a casing historically made from animal intestine, though synthetic casings of collagen or cellulose are now also used. Raw sausages are cooked by pan frying, broiling or barbecuing, and sausage making is a traditional food preservation technique, since sausages can be cured, dried, smoked or frozen, with some varieties keeping without refrigeration. The word entered English in the mid fifteenth century from Old North French, and the food has ancient roots: Homer mentioned blood sausages, and ancient Romans especially favored sausages from the region of Lucania, a tradition whose descendants persist worldwide today.