Casing (sausage)

Casing, sausage casing, or sausage skin is the material that encloses the filling of a sausage. Casings are divided into two categories, natural and artificial. Artificial casings, such as collagen, cellulose, plastic, and extruded casings, are relatively new to the field, mainly borne of market demand during the technological advances of the early 20th century.

It is often assumed that sausages were invented by the Sumerians in the region that is Iraq today, around 4000 BC. Reference to a cooked meat product stuffed in a goat stomach like a sausage was known in Babylon and described as a recipe in the world’s oldest cookbook 3,750 years ago.

The Chinese sausage làcháng, which consists of goat and lamb meat, was first mentioned in 589 BC. The Greek poet Homer mentioned a kind of blood sausage in his Odyssey (book 20, poem 25); Epicharmus (ca. 550 BC — ca. 460 BC) wrote a comedy entitled The Sausage. Numerous books report that sausages were already popular among the ancient Greeks and Romans.

Natural sausage casings are made from the sub-mucosa, a layer of the intestine that consists mainly of naturally occurring collagen. This should not be confused with collagen casings, which are artificially processed from collagen derived from the skins of cattle. Natural casings are derived from the intestinal tract of farmed animals, are edible and bear a close resemblance to the original intestine after processing. The outer fat and the inner mucosa lining are removed during processing.

Natural casings are traditional products that have been used in the production of meat specialties for centuries and have remained virtually unchanged in function, appearance, and composition. Salt and water are all that is used for cleaning and preservation. Natural casings are the only casings that can be used in organic sausage production.

A large variety of sausage is produced world-wide using intestines of pigs, sheep, goats, cattle and sometimes horses. Although the intestines were previously flushed, scraped and cleaned by hand, more recently, machinery has been used for large scale production.

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