chorizo, chorissa
I have been quietly pursuing a little mystery recently. The probable answer was staring me in the face, as it so often does with little mysteries.
Chorizo is the classic Spanish pork sausage. It ought to have nothing in common with Jewish cooking. Except that old Jewish recipes from the right sort of background (a branch of Sephardi that retained its Spanish cooking heritage with particular vigour) contain something called chorissa and it serves close enough to the same function as chorizo in that cuisine. They have to be the same thing. And they can’t. Pork is not commonly part of Jewish foodways. This was driving me quietly crazy.
I found half an answer in Chaim Raphael’s edition of The Jewish Manual. Chorissa was a specifically Jewish sausage, sold at a specialist Jewish butcher in nineteenth century London. It was used in recipes that were decidedly Sephardi.
But what was in the sausages? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been pork. They were probably smoked beef sausages. The only evidence I have is here, however, and this may be a local variant.
From a general standpoint, my mystery is solved, but from the point of view of an historian, it has only really just started. Knowing that an ingredient existed and was used in a certain way in 1846 in London isn’t the same as tracing it from 1492 Spain to 1846 London. America in the late eighteenth century is the first step of my link and probably close enough to London so that I can assume that chorissa were smoked beef sausages. I need more evidence, though.
I don’t have time for a proper search, but I’ll keep my eyes open and report in as I find more links. To celebrate having come this far though, tomorrow I’m going to tell my Jewish butcher story. If I don’t, remind me. You’ll be really sorry to miss it if I forget. Trust me on this.
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