How the Sausage Is Made: Notes on Craft and Context

Like the ham and barbecue heralded as foundational southern foodways, sausage is linked to the temperate climate, mast-filled deciduous forests, and peanut fields that helped pigs flourish in the Upland South. Modes of making and serving it respond to resource constraints, aesthetic preferences, and local landscapes, cultivating shared tastes alongside networks of pleasure and obligation. While sausage produced in artisanal workshops has garnered broad acclaim, attention to meats processed in factory and domestic settings—from Vienna sausages to livermush to fresh-ground patties bottled at home—often concentrates on ways that these foods are altered or served, rather than on the skill and ingenious adaptation of their makers. Working harder to understand exactly how this sausage is made compels us to consider the intersections of tacit knowledge, physical dexterity, social savvy, and sensory power, as well as how the appellation craft can bolster hierarchies framed in terms of gender, class, and race.