Saucisse de Montbéliard

Appearance & taste

The Saucisse de Montbéliard is a cylindrical, slightly curved pork sausage. The mixture is filled into uncoloured, narrow pork casing, exclusively natural casing, and twisted off by hand; the casing gives it its curved shape. Smoking makes it lightly golden brown, but not uniformly. Through the translucent casing the lean meat shows darker and the fat lighter. The sausage is firm; after cooking, the cut face shows a coarse-grained but even, bound mixture.

The smoky aroma comes from smoking with the wood and shavings of conifers and is particularly pronounced in the raw sausage. Cooked, it has a balanced and lasting taste of meat, without acidity or sharpness, and is slightly spicy from caraway, pepper and any other spices. The cooked sausage is soft, supple, firm and juicy, neither hard nor rubbery.

It is sold raw, cooked or deep-frozen and is supplied to consumers only packaged; for further processing it may also be offered sliced. The presentation may only refer to smoking in the “Tuyé” if the sausages were smoked exclusively in such a chimney.

Production

Female and castrated male pigs of breeds entered in the herd books and breeding registers approved in France are fattened. They are given, among other things, whey from cheesemaking, which makes up 15 to 35 % of the dry matter of the fattening feed; the supplementary feed consists of at least 50 % cereals and cereal products. The linoleic acid content of the feed is limited to 1.7 %. According to the specification, this produces firm, white fat that does not melt during smoking and cooking and takes on the smoke better. The carcasses weigh at least 75 kg warm.

Only ham, shoulder, belly, back fat, loin and meat trimmings are permitted for the sausage mixture; the neck only without glands and red patches. At most 30 % of the mixture may have been deep-frozen. Lean meat and firm fat are coarsely chopped, to at least 6 mm, and tumbled.

Smoking uses softwood: at least 6 hours in a conventional smokehouse, 9 hours with a combination of traditional and conventional smokehouse or 12 hours in a traditional smokehouse. The wood and shavings smoulder slowly without a flame, and the smoke must be monitored constantly. All steps from preparing the sausage mixture to smoking take place in Franche-Comté.

Origin & history

The area comprises the Doubs, Jura and Haute-Saône departments and the area around Belfort. 44 % of Franche-Comté is wooded, in the mountains mainly with conifers, predominantly firs. Farming is dominated by dairy cattle, and many small cheese dairies (“fruitières”) make cheeses such as Mont d’Or, Comté, Morbier and Bleu de Gex. The whey from these dairies is fed to pigs locally; since the beginning of the 20th century, pig farming, which until then had only served home consumption, has grown along with the quantity of milk.

In the cold mountain areas the “Tuyé” developed, a chimney in the middle of the farmhouse with a smoking chamber in which charcuterie was dried, smoked and preserved; the smoking heated the house at the same time. This practice comes from the Haut-Doubs and spread throughout Franche-Comté. The PGI area was defined according to the distribution of the Tuyés and traditional smokehouses. Because softwood grows everywhere here, according to the specification the sausage, unlike most smoked sausages in France and Europe, is not smoked with hardwood.

According to some ethnologists, the Sequani and Aedui already knew this sausage, from the Mandubii, whose capital was Epomanduodurum (Mandeure near Montbéliard). In the 14th century it was still called “Andouille” or “Andouillette”. The farmers used only lean pork and fat, seasoned generously with garlic and caraway and dried the sausages for a long time in the chimney over juniper branches and vine shoots. According to the specification, in the 18th century the scholar Georges Cuvier, a native of Montbéliard, took it to Paris; it has been represented at French fairs and exhibitions since 1936.