Saucisson sec d'Auvergne

Appearance & taste

The sausage has a soft to dry texture and smells and tastes of garlic. When cut, it is red to dark red, firmly bound and marbled with a little well-distributed fat. According to the specification, the sausage meat contains two to ten times as much garlic as other air-dried raw sausages.

The thicker saucisson sec is straight and measures 4 to 12 cm in diameter; depending on the casing it weighs from 200 g to over 800 g. The slimmer saucisse sèche is 2.5 to 5 cm in diameter and is horseshoe-shaped, U-shaped, straight or wound in a spiral around a stick; the spirals weigh 0.8 to 4 kg. The sausage is sold whole in natural casing, tied with string where applicable, in a net, coated with lime or with a white mould coating, and also in one piece or sliced and packed without casing. The final product contains at most 20 % fat and at most 1 % soluble sugars.

Production

The meat comes from fattening pigs and cull sows; uncastrated boars are excluded. At least 60 % of the fattening feed consists of cereals, oilseeds and their by-products. Only loin, shoulder, ham, breast and back fat are used, and fresh; freezing is allowed only under strict conditions. At least 70 % of the meat comes from sows with a carcass weight of over 120 kg or from fattening pigs with a carcass weight of over 93 kg. This meat gives the sausage its red to deep red colour.

The minced meat is salted, seasoned with garlic and spices, filled into the casing, fermented and dried. Depending on size, the process takes at least 18 days for the smallest saucisses and at least 42 days for the thickest saucissons. From the preparation of the sausage meat to the end of drying, everything stays in the area of origin.

Origin & history

The area lies on a mountain massif about 1,000 m high made up of plateaus and volcanic cones, cut by many valleys. The climate is continental. Because the rugged terrain lies across the moist westerly winds, strong foehn winds blow, especially on the leeward side, and these favour drying.

Until the middle of the 20th century, pigs were kept on the farms and their meat was mainly dry-cured, traditionally in winter, when curing and drying were easy to control. Garlic, which has always been grown in the Limagne of the Puy-de-Dôme, and spices helped with preservation. Older animals were preferably made into sausage, hence the dark colour. From this tradition grew craft and later industrial businesses; more than 15 of today’s businesses were already making raw sausage before the Second World War. The sausage also became known through people from Auvergne who moved to Paris from the mid-19th century and often worked in the restaurant trade there.

The “Larousse ménager” of 1926 lists the sausages among the specialities of Auvergne, and in 1933 Curnonsky and Croze counted them among the gastronomic treasures of France. Today air-dried sausages and meats make up 78 % of the meat products made in the area, compared with 16 % nationwide.