Saucisse de Toulouse
Fresh sausage made from coarsely minced pork, seasoned with salt, pepper, and sometimes nutmeg. The recipe is one of the simplest and contains nothing complicated; it is the indispensable ingredient of cassoulet.
| Lean pork shoulder | 700 g |
| Pork belly (fat) | 300 g |
| Fine salt | 18 g |
| Crushed black pepper | 3 g |
| Grated nutmeg (optional) | 0.5 g |
| Iced water | 50 ml |
| Hog casing (Ø 32–36 mm) | — |
- Preparation: Cut the meats into 3 to 4 cm cubes. The meat should come from high-quality pigs, ideally free-range. Refrigerate at 0 °C for 2 hours.
- Mincing: Mince through the 8 to 10 mm plate. Coarse mincing is essential: the pieces of meat must remain visible.
- Seasoning: Mix the salt, the crushed pepper and the nutmeg with the iced water. Add into the meat, then knead gently so as not to crush the pieces.
- Resting: Rest for 2 to 4 hours in the refrigerator.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the hog casings without packing too tightly. Form a long, continuous spiral sausage (the characteristic form), or cut into 15 cm portions.
- Storage: Keep for 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator.
- Cooking: Pan-fry over medium heat for 15 to 20 minutes, grill on the barbecue, or add to a cassoulet (a slow-cooked bean and meat casserole from the Languedoc).
The saucisse de Toulouse is a fresh sausage whose seasoning is limited to salt, crushed black pepper and, optionally, a touch of nutmeg. It contains no starch binder, no wine, no herbs, no complex spices. Its coarse mincing produces a texture in which the pieces of meat remain identifiable at the cut. This simple composition and this mincing set it apart from nearly all French fresh sausages, most of which are minced more finely or seasoned with herbs and wine.
The saucisse de Toulouse is not documented under this name in culinary records before the nineteenth century. Recipes for fresh sausages of coarsely minced pork appear in the books of the South-West from the eighteenth century, but their association with the name of Toulouse as a specific designation is attested only in the gastronomic guides and charcuterie treatises of the second half of the nineteenth century. Its name points to its geographical origin, without any legal protection. It is therefore subject to no product specification. The label Véritable Saucisse de Toulouse, created in 2001, governs, on a voluntary basis, the production of products conforming to traditional criteria, without PGI or PDO. The Confrérie de la Véritable Saucisse de Toulouse watches over respect for the original recipe.
Its best-documented use is as an ingredient in cassoulet, where its coarse mincing lets it withstand long cooking without falling apart, a quality the fine-forcemeat sausages do not share. The history of cassoulet is marked by a rivalry between Castelnaudary, Carcassonne and Toulouse, each defending its own recipe. A popular legend places its origin during the siege of Castelnaudary in the Hundred Years’ War, a story that suffers from a chronological inconsistency: white beans were introduced into Europe only in the sixteenth century, nearly two centuries after the events invoked.
In the French television programme L’Île aux enfants, broadcast on ORTF, FR3 and then TF1 between 1974 and 1982, the character Casimir counted the saucisse de Toulouse among the ingredients of his gloubi-boulga: a mixture of strawberry jam, grated chocolate, mashed banana, strong mustard and a saucisse de Toulouse ‘raw but warm’.
The saucisse de Toulouse is, with the chipolata (and the merguez), one of the best-selling fresh sausages in France. It is present in every national distribution channel. Its lack of geographical protection leaves its name open to uncontrolled use, leading to a proliferation of industrial products bearing this designation, with compositions varying from maker to maker.
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