This is the oldest written Chinese sausage recipe, from the Qimin Yaoshu (‘Essential Techniques for the Welfare of the People’), the farming and food manual that the official Jia Sixie finished around 544 CE. It is short — forty-odd characters in the chapter on roasting — and it describes a fresh mutton sausage: chopped mutton, sliced scallion whites, salt, fermented-black-bean liquid, ginger and ground Sichuan pepper stuffed into sheep intestine, two lengths clamped together and roasted over the fire, cut and eaten hot. The diagnostic detail is everything it does not have: no pork, no sugar, no wine, no drying, no chilli (still a thousand years from China). It is a grilled lamb sausage seasoned the way northern Chinese lamb is still seasoned, and it shows that the sweet, dried Cantonese lap cheong most people think of as ‘Chinese sausage’ is a much later branch. The same book also contains a sheep’s-blood sausage, in its chapter on soups. This version translates the text exactly and turns it into a working formula. I have not made this one yet; it is built from the Chinese text and modern lamb-sausage practice and is untested.
Ingredients
MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight
- 2,270 g (5 lb) boneless lamb or mutton shoulder, with about 20–25% fat — 100%
SEASONING (% of meat weight)
- 36 g fine salt (1.6%)
- 180 g scallion whites, finely sliced (8%)
- 136 g fermented-black-bean liquid (6%) — from 60 g douchi simmered in 250 ml water 10 minutes and strained
- 45 g fresh ginger, grated (2%)
- 9 g Sichuan peppercorns, toasted and finely ground (0.4%)
- 22–26 mm natural sheep casing, about 8 m (26 ft)
- A hinged wire grill basket or two flat metal skewers per pair
Directions
- In the collection: the black-bean liquid is a salty, savoury ancestor of Soy Sauce; Salt does the rest. The collection’s other lamb sausages are Mutton Sausage and Merguez.
- The original, translated: ‘Take sheep’s coiled intestine and clean it thoroughly. Chop mutton fine, as for steamed filling; slice scallion whites fine; season with salt, fermented-bean liquid, ginger and ground pepper, making it salty or mild to taste; stuff the intestine. Clamp two lengths together and roast them. Cut and eat — very fragrant and delicious.’ Everything below is that, with numbers.
- Make the bean liquid: simmer the fermented black beans in the water 10 minutes, mash, strain and cool. It carries salt, so the salt above is already reduced.
- Chop, don’t grind fine: the text says chop the mutton ‘like filling for steamed buns’ — fine, but by knife. Grind the chilled lamb once through a 6 mm (¼ in) plate, or chop by hand with two cleavers for the old texture.
- Mix: add salt, bean liquid, scallion, ginger and Sichuan pepper and mix 1–2 minutes until sticky.
- Taste — the text’s own decision point: ‘make it salty or mild to taste’ is the only instruction on quantity. Fry a small patty and adjust the salt and bean liquid until it suits you.
- Stuff: stuff into sheep casing and twist into 30 cm (12 in) lengths, or leave as long ropes.
- Clamp two together and roast: lay two lengths side by side in a hinged grill basket, or run two flat skewers through a pair, and grill over medium charcoal, turning, until browned and 71 °C / 160 °F inside, about 15 minutes. Clamping two together keeps thin sheep casings from curling and lets them be turned as one.
- Cut and eat: cut into short lengths at the table and eat hot. Nothing else is called for.
- Sibling recipe: compare with Lap Cheong (Chinese Sausage) — the same casing idea fourteen centuries later, made sweet, dried and with pork.
Notes
Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. The source is Qimin Yaoshu, juan 9, chapter 80, ‘Roasting methods’ (炙法第八十), the entry ‘Method for stuffed intestine’ (灌腸法). The full text: 取羊盤腸，淨洗治。細剉羊肉，令如籠肉，細切蔥白，鹽、豉汁、薑、椒末調和，令鹹淡適口，以灌腸。兩條夾而炙之。割食甚香美。 Notes on the words: 盤腸 is the coiled small intestine; 籠肉 is meat chopped for steamed (basket) dishes; 豉汁 is the liquid from fermented black soybeans (chi), the soy-sauce ancestor of the period; 椒 is Sichuan pepper (huajiao) — black pepper is a different word, 胡椒; 夾 is to clamp or hold between two things. The text gives no quantities. Deviations: (1) all quantities are this recipe’s; (2) a meat grinder may replace the knife; (3) the casing calibre is modern; (4) cooking to 71 °C is modern guidance. No cure: it is a fresh sausage. Untested.
Where it came from. Jia Sixie was a Northern Wei official; the Qimin Yaoshu is usually dated between 533 and 544 CE and is the oldest complete Chinese agricultural manual, with long chapters on food. This entry is the earliest Chinese sausage recipe in a surviving text. The popular claim that Chinese sausage is ‘5,000 years old’ has no textual basis; the documented history is about 1,500 years.
The book’s blood sausage. Chapter 76, on thick soups, has a second stuffed intestine, 羊盤腸雌解法: five sheng of sheep’s blood (cleaned of fibres), two sheng of finely chopped sheep fat, a jin of ginger, three pieces of tangerine peel, a ge of ground Sichuan pepper, a sheng of bean-paste liquid, five ge of black-bean liquid, and a thickener of a sheng and a half of flour with a sheng of rice, all mixed and loosened with three sheng of water; the large intestine is washed and rinsed with white wine, stuffed, folded into five-cun lengths and boiled ‘until no blood comes out’, then sliced and eaten with vinegar and sauce. So China’s first written blood sausage is the same age as its first mutton sausage.
Variations. The book’s next entry, from the earlier Shi Jing, makes grilled balls of mutton and pork with ginger, tangerine peel, pickled melon and scallion — the same seasoning world as meatballs.
Sourcing and gear. Fermented black beans (douchi) are sold in Chinese groceries in bags or tubs. Mutton has more of the old flavour than young lamb; halal butchers sell it. A hinged grill basket does the clamping.
Still open. Northern Wei measures (sheng, ge, jin) do not convert to modern units with confidence, so the blood sausage’s proportions are given as written, not converted.
The photo. The photograph is a printed page of the Qimin Yaoshu, not the dish.