FISH SAUSAGES - Peter Howgate

Fish sausages can be made in ways similar to those for making meat sausages, basically a mixture of fish meat, rusk or other farinaceous filler, flavourings and additives stuffed into a casing. White fish, that is fish with low fat contents are too dry to make a successful sausage without the addition of pork fat. Recipes for this type of fish sausage are given in Torry Advisory Note No. 43, 'Delicatessen fish products'. TAN's are available on the oneFish Web site, www.onefish.org. Fish sausages have a short shelf life at chill temperatures in the absence of preservatives, and in many countries there is only a very short list of preservatives permitted for fish products. They can be successfully stored as frozen products under the same good practices as for fish fillets. Sausages made from oily fish rapidly develop hydrolytic rancidity or oxidative rancidity flavours in chilled or in frozen storage.

There is very little literature on fish sausages. Two summary accounts I am aware of, though haven't seen, are:

Amano, K. 1965, Fish sausage manufacturing. In: Fish as Food, vol 3, G Borgstrom, ed., New York, Academic Press, pp 265-279.

Tanikawa, E. 1963, Fish sausage and ham industry in Japan, Advances in Food Research, 12, 367-?

Peter Howgate