Chaurice is the hot fresh pork sausage of Creole New Orleans: finely chopped pork and fat, onion, garlic, thyme, bay and parsley, seasoned “very hot” with cayenne and red pepper, stuffed into thin links or pressed into patties, and fried. It is the sausage the 1901 Picayune Creole Cook Book calls indispensable to jambalaya, and the one New Orleans now sells as “hot sausage” — a patty on French bread with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomato and pickles is the hot sausage po’boy. The name is the Louisiana French spelling of chorizo, and that is the whole family resemblance: there is no paprika cure, no drying, no smoke. What separates it from its Louisiana neighbours is that it is fresh and fiery where andouille is smoked and boudin is cooked with rice. The 1901 book draws its own line: chaurice is pork, while saucisses are “made from pork and beef mixed”; modern hot sausage is often beef or beef-and-pork, and one well-known brand is all beef. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from the 1901 Picayune chaurice and Marianski’s chaurice, and it is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 1,702 g / 3 lb 12 oz boneless pork shoulder (75%)
- 568 g / 1 lb 4 oz pork back fat or fatty belly (25%)
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 41 g / 1.4 oz fine salt (1.8%)
- 9.1 g cayenne (0.4%)
- 4.5 g crushed red pepper flakes (0.2%)
- 6.8 g sweet paprika (“red pepper” in the 1901 text), for colour (0.3%)
- 6.8 g black pepper, fine (0.3%)
- 2.3 g dried thyme (0.1%)
- 1.1 g allspice, ground (0.05%)
- 2 bay leaves, ground to a powder
- 91 g / 3.2 oz onion, minced very fine (4%)
- 9.1 g garlic, minced very fine (0.4%)
- 11 g flat-leaf parsley, minced very fine (0.5%)
- 114 g / 4.0 oz ice water (5%)
- 22–24 mm sheep casing, about 30 ft / 9 m (the 1901 casing), or 32 mm hog casing — or form into 3½ oz / 100 g patties
Directions
Key ingredients
- In the collection: Black Pepper and cayenne. Chaurice is what goes into Jambalaya à la Créole (Picayune 1916), and it belongs in New Orleans–Style Red Beans and Rice (Creole) as well. The smoked Louisiana sausage is Louisiana Andouille Sausage.
- Grind fine-ish: chill pork and fat to 30–32 °F / −1–0 °C and grind through a 6 mm (1/4 in) plate, then the mixed meat once more through 4.5 mm. The 1901 recipe says to “hash the pork as fine as possible — fat and lean”; Marianski grinds coarser (10–12 mm). A finer grind suits the thin sheep casing and a fried patty.
- Season hard: mix the salt, peppers, paprika, thyme, allspice and bay into the ice water, add onion, garlic and parsley, and mix into the meat until tacky, about 2 minutes.
- Taste — the decision point: fry a small patty. The 1901 instruction is blunt: “Chaurice must be seasoned very hot, so do not fear to have too much red pepper.” It should be hot enough to notice, with thyme and onion behind it. If it tastes like breakfast sausage, add cayenne now.
- Stuff or form: stuff into sheep casing and twist into links of whatever length you like (the book says “the lengths you desire”), or press into 3½ oz / 100 g patties between sheets of paper for po’boys. Fresh sausage: refrigerate and cook within 2 days, or freeze.
- Fry: the 1901 way is fried in enough hot lard “to have the sausage swim in it”, drained and served with parsley. A heavy skillet with a film of fat works: fry links 10–12 minutes, patties 4–5 minutes a side, to 160 °F / 71 °C.
- Hot sausage po’boy: lay two hot patties on a split, lightly toasted length of New Orleans French bread, top with a slice of American cheese to melt, and dress with mayonnaise, shredded lettuce, sliced tomato, pickle chips and hot sauce. The Andouille Po’Boy Sandwiches With Jack Daniel’s Remoulade in the collection is the smoked-sausage cousin.
- Into the pot: drop a few links into a pot of cabbage, greens or beans for the last 20 minutes, as the Picayune suggests — they season the whole pot.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The backbone is “Chaurice” in The Picayune Creole Cook Book (1901; read in the 1916 fifth-edition printing, p. 72): 4 lb lean fresh pork and 2 lb fat fresh pork (a third fat), 2 large onions, a clove of garlic, a teaspoon each of cayenne-and-chili pepper and of red pepper, 3 teaspoons salt, 2 of black pepper, thyme, parsley, 2 bay leaves and half a teaspoon of allspice, hashed fine and stuffed into sheep casings. Working numbers are checked against Marianski’s “Chaurice” (all pork butt; 1.8% salt; thyme; cayenne 0.2%; red pepper flakes; bay; garlic; parsley; onion 6%; water 10%; 32–36 mm hog, 8 in links). Deviations: (1) salt is 1.8% — the 1901 quantity works out to well under 1%, which reads as under-salted to a modern palate and was likely a measuring-spoon guess; (2) fat at 25% added fat rather than a third, because shoulder already carries fat that 1901 “lean pork” did not; (3) heat set at 0.6% combined cayenne and flakes, which is very hot by most standards and still a judgement call. Untested.
Where chaurice came from. The name is the Louisiana French rendering of Spanish chorizo, and the usual story credits the Spanish colonial decades (Spain governed Louisiana from the 1760s to 1800); no document fixes when the sausage or the word arrived. The 1901 Picayune is the earliest full recipe in this collection’s sources, and it already treats chaurice as an everyday necessity: hawked in the streets alongside saucisses and boudins, fried for breakfast, “used most extensively in making Jambalaya”, and dropped into cabbage and beans. Modern “New Orleans hot sausage” is described as part of the cuisine of Creoles of colour; the Vaucresson family, Seventh Ward sausage makers, are credited with making it from about 1899.
The name. Chaurice and chorizo are the same word and different sausages: the Spanish one is cured with pimentón; the Mexican one is fresh with dried chiles and vinegar; the Creole one is fresh with cayenne, thyme and bay. The page on the Columbian Exchange lists it with andouille, boudin and linguiça as sausages that could not exist before the pig arrived.
Variations. Beef or beef-and-pork hot sausage: replace up to all of the pork with 80/20 beef chuck; A. P. Patton’s, a long-standing New Orleans brand, is all beef. Paprika-heavy commercial hot sausage is a brighter red. Some makers add sage. Links for the grill or crawfish boil are usually in hog casing.
Sourcing and gear. Sheep casing for the thin traditional link; a 4.5 mm plate for the second grind. New Orleans French bread (Leidenheimer is the standard) for po’boys; a soft-crust baguette is the nearest substitute.
Still open. No published Vaucresson or Patton’s formula exists to compare against. The date chaurice entered Louisiana is not documented.
The photo. The photograph is a hot-sausage po’boy at the New Orleans Po-Boy Preservation Festival — the sandwich chaurice is best known for.
Read more on the site. The Columbian Exchange