SAUSAGES IN BRITAIN
Sausages were divided into 'links' for the first time amidst the reign of King Charles I, whilst the first specific English reference to this delicacy appeared as sawsage sometime during the 15th century. Furthermore, the legendary and infamous highwayman Dick Turpin was known to have moonlighted as a butcher and sausage-maker.
The British have a long-standing love affair with sausages. Queen Victoria was known to have enjoyed sausage but would insist that they contained meat that had been chopped by hand and not minced.
They were nicknamed bangers during the Second World War because the high water content in the sausages would boil when fried causing them to explode with a bang. Food restrictions ensured that quality ingredients were scarcely available, which meant that sausages were made cheaply.
In the UK we eat approximately 175,000 tons of sausages each year. In money terms, this is worth around £487 million. It is estimated that 90% of households in the UK buy sausages with 50% doing so at least every 4 weeks whilst 5 million people will eat sausages in Britain each day. Sausages are mostly eaten as part of an evening meal with Saturday the most popular day for eating them.
A Teledu Opus production for S4C