The Vienna sausage is one of those foods brought to American by immigrants and then naturalized into an iconic item.
In 1893, Samuel Ladanyi and Emil Reichel, both immigrants from Austria-Hungary, founded the Vienna Sausage Company at 1215 S. With the manufacturing facility in the rear, they sold sausage in the storefront.
Vienna sausages are made by grinding meat such as chicken, beef, turkey or pork to a paste consistency: mixing the meat with salt and spices.
The word sausage comes today by way of the Middle English sausige and the Old French saussiche, all from the Latin word salsus, meaning ‘salted’.
Although the product is still widely sold, famously to hikers and fisherman, Vienna sausage consumptions has declined since it heyday from the 1940s to the 1970s.
In North America the term Vienna sausage has most often come to mean only smaller and much shorter smoked and canned wieners, rather than hot dogs.
The sausages are used in Filipino pancits, and there is even popular Cuban dish consisting of Viennas cooked with rice and flavored with Cuban spices.
Vienna sausage
