A food with a bang?

Posted On April 20, 2010

According to Wikipedia, a saucisson is a primitive fuse containing gunpowder in a pitch-coated fabric casing. This surprised me, as I tucked into a cured pork salami — a saucisson sec, from Waitrose, to be precise. In modern explosives parlance, a saucisson is the flexible casing used to contain explosives in mines – I’ve certainly seen and handled these on various site visits, although I’d never heard the term.

Back to the meat, though. Sec, as wine buffs will recall, means ‘dry’ – hence, the saucisson sec is a cured sausage that has been allowed to dry. It’s very good, on the whole, and this one was a nice example. I enjoyed the first few slices of mine with a little cheese and some crackers.