I discovered the (in)famous French sausage “Andouilette,” in an article at the Times Online (UK), which begins:
“I would never have discovered Troyes, a beautiful medieval town of timber-framed buildings, were it not for a pale, lumpy sausage made from pigs’ intestines that smells like a pissoir….”
Definition: pis·soir (pis-wahr): A public urinal located on the street in some European countries.
[French, from Old French, from pissier, to urinate]
The author of the Wikipedia article about the sausage has a somewhat different take on Andouilette:
French andouillette, on the other hand, is an acquired taste and can be an interesting challenge even for adventurous eaters who don’t object to the taste or aroma of feces. It is sometimes eaten cold, as in picnic baskets. Served cold and sliced thinly, the smell, taste, and texture may be mistaken for an andouille [a milder, less stinky sausage], but on closer inspection the texture is considerably more rubbery and the meat has a more feces-like flavor. By contrast, many French eateries serve andouillette as a hot dish, and foreigners have been repulsed by the aroma, to the point where they find it inedible (see external links). While hot andouillette smells of feces, food safety requires that all such matter is removed from the meat before cooking. Feces-like aroma can be attributed to the common use of the pig’s colon (chitterlings) in this sausage, and stems from the same compounds that give feces some of its odors. (source)



23 responses so far ↓
Swyphs! BCN notes // May 21, 2008 at 10:36 am |
[...] Paris was awesome. My first time there. I ate snails, pig’s feet, and unfortunately half an andouillette sausage. I grew up being the pickiest eater ever- and now this. Talk about [...]
Laurel // June 6, 2008 at 11:41 pm |
Yum. I’m normally a very picky eater (eat snails but not frogs legs – frogs are so cute). But love andouillette. I was once married to a Frenchman from Burgundy were it is served with lashings of Dijon mustard mainly at cute little thatched restaurants called Courte Paille. Andouillette is stinky but so is Epoisse cheese (also from Burgundy).
starmanjones // June 7, 2008 at 12:07 am |
Andouillette is stinky but so is Epoisse cheese (also from Burgundy).
Yeah, but the stench in the cheese is not of fecal origins. The differences here are like the differences between pig’s ass and cabbage.
Tim // July 19, 2008 at 7:05 pm |
It’s more accurate to say that the feces and andouillette each have the same origin: the colon. Back in the States, I would pay a good price for a plate of andouillette with “ancient style mustard” and frites. Unfortunately it is not to be.
starmanjones // July 19, 2008 at 8:12 pm |
Okay: Andouillette is made of colon, and merely smells like pigshit. Doesn’t make it sound any more palatable to me, but I’m sure it’s an acquired taste. Given the choice, for my part I would rather not aquire a taste for pig colon sausage embued with essence of pig shit*, with or without rustic stone-ground mustard and pommes frites,and the ravings of haute cuisine aficianados notwithstanding A savory bratwurst with kraut will do very nicely, thank you.
*A “familiarity born from proximity” during the life of the hapless pig who gave his all, including crap-conduit/shit-chute, to the palates of hungry Frenchmen.
gary // September 2, 2008 at 6:09 am |
I have worked in the factory in Troyes and I can vouch for the fact that the smell during production of the famous andouillette is much much worse than the rather pleasant barbequed charcoal aroma when dished up in a restaurant.
The Omnivore’s 100 « Wendalicious // September 5, 2008 at 5:50 pm |
[...] or andouillette. No thank you to [...]
Eric Rathbone // November 8, 2008 at 5:46 am |
I tried these in Paris on two seperate occassions. I ordered them a second time because I could not believe that people actually enjoyed eating sausage that not only smelled of feces but tasted of them too. Apparently I was wrong. They do. I, however, do not.
LMGM // November 10, 2008 at 1:44 pm |
I just bought “Andouillette de Canard,” (Duck Andouillette), thinking that it obviously wouldn’t real colon, since nobody in their right mind would serve you poultry intestines. Turns out, it’s made of pig colon with duck meat. It smells like a mixture of poop and liver and blood sausage. The taste, with a strong red wine sauce and a lot of roasted onions, is passable, but not worth the stench released in my kitchen.
Max // November 23, 2008 at 11:36 am |
That is the most disgusting thing I probably have ever seen in my life. Couldn’t even bite it. Next thing in a row would be to eat raw fesces I believe. Europe!
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Charlie Walton // June 2, 2009 at 8:14 am |
I enjoy Andouillette every time I visit France. The best is indeed at any Courte Paille. I did have some in a Lyon restaurant that was not as good, although the mustard sauce was far better.
Favourite cheeses: Liverot, Pont L’eveque, Roquefort.
Dan // July 1, 2009 at 9:26 am |
I tried, I really tried….but this was about the worst experience I have ever had in my life. I love blood sausages, haggis, Yakiniku, etc….but this was horrible. The texture of rubbery intestine bits and the aweful smell of my last meal in Paris are still making me gag 2 days later. For me, the mustard sauce did nothing to counter the flavor of the sausage, if anything it intensified the flavor. I had to stop about 1/3 of the way through my meal as I almost tossed cookies right there at the restaurant. A taste I will never aquire
Zweck // August 28, 2009 at 3:04 pm |
My boyfriend ordered this mistakenly in a restaurant. It looked and smelt like a shit. We took a photo of it. To mark the fact that it was the worst meal we’d ever had in France. Probably ever.
Minna // August 30, 2009 at 8:44 am |
Just had my first – and definitely my last – andouillette in Arras, France. Both my husband and I took one bite, then quickly searched for our napkins to spit it out. I then proceeded to dissect my portion for scientific inspection (and photos), only to regret doing so moments later because it made our whole table smell like poo. I consider myself an adventurous eater — loved cow udder soup and sour lamb’s lung in Germany, for example, and adore sushi, if that’s even considered adventurous anymore – but andouillette? Absolutely could not handle it. However, hundreds of French people surrounding us were munching on these fascinating creations with true gusto (we were in fact at an andouillette festival, totally by accident as we’d just happened to visit Arras on the day of the festival). Thank goodness I had a lovely kir on the table to immediately kill the flavor, or I might have been walking around with “bouche d’andouillette” for the rest of the day.
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