What's a
British standard size for a sausage
then?
February
2013
Well, what is the size of a
standard British sausage?
It's a good question and given from
what we've sampled and reviewed over
the last near 12 months there
doesn't seem to be much of a
consistent sizing across any
producers. Now good casings (hog and
the smaller sheep) are available in
some standardisation for example,
22-24mm diameter for chipolatas,
29-31mm for medium sausages, and
32-35mm for thick sausages.
Alternative cases in other material
do go as small as 19mm diameter.
Whereas some cases can go to 60mm or
larger for salami production for
example.
We're told that
sausages used to be produced in "4,
8, 16 & 32 to the pound" giving some
consistency in sizes, however in
production now just how much mixture
gets in to the case and how long it
is between twists appears to be
ultimately down to the individual
sausage maker as you may expect.
A search on the internet won't
find too much on this either, so
let's look at our own sampling data
and what we've found. For the larger
pork sausages lengths do vary
between 95mm to a whopping 130mm,
mind you, Cumberland lengths can go
to 580mm!
The point here too
is that you can under fill a large
case and produce a cooked sausage of
much smaller diameter. It's a bit
"baggy" but the casing will tighten
and shrink down some on cooking.
Alternatively over stuffing will
produce a much larger cooked
sausage, but the risk of splits and
bursting are more likely.
Chipolatas that we've seen and tried
vary widely too. You would think
that these would be shorter than the
porkers but they do vary from 85mm
to a long 140mm. Cocktail sausages
would be much shorter again you
would expect, but yes, it's down to
the producer. Additionally with hand
production we've noticed that there
is sometimes a real variance between
linked sausages in the same string,
whereas with machine twisted
production they do maintain more of
a consistency.
The producers
we've spoken to about this don't
seem to see a problem with it as the
size of what they produce they say
is just as important as the quality
of meat and the flavour the customer
enjoys. It's almost part of the
marketing and creating some identity
from what we can see.
Take
Oxhey Lane Farm Shop in Pinner,
John Wiggett is proud to produce his
sausages BIG, and says he well known
for this and even
produces much larger jumbo versions of
his best sellers for some of his
regular customers.
It's the same
with
Durrants Farm (Margaretting),
Emily Stockwell is also known
locally for producing what is
practically a "quarter pounder"
individual cumberland sausage!
So being different is what it's all about then. Standard sizing is really not necessary.
Vive la difference!
