Den Bosch Sausage

Bossche beuling

Bossche beuling is a sausage or meat pudding made from the “waste products” of pork slaughtering, such as the head, liver, lungs, heart and tongue. Sometimes beef may also be added. This is mixed with bone broth, lard, buckwheat meal and spices (such as allspice, peper, clove, nutmeg, marjoram and cinnamon), and boiled in natural intestine casings that are 5-8 cm wide. Sweeteners may also be added. The sausage is tied in a rounded shape and weights about 1 kg. Bossche beuling is gray in color, darkening after a few days, and can have a spicy or salty taste depending on the producer and the proportions of different types of meat and offal available.

Boiled meat from the pig’s head and blanched, under cooked liver is mixed with lard and coarsely ground. This is then mixed with the broth, spices, and meal until thick enough that a spoon can stand upright in the mixture. It is filled into casings, tied, and boiled for 60 to 90 minutes in 70-80°C water until done. After a short time for drying, the pudding is ready for sale. Bossche beuling will keep refrigerated for no more than one week (or up to two weeks if artificial casings are used). Bossche beuling differs from balkenbrij only in the different spices used and the fact that it is boiled afterward. It differs from Twentse bakleverwost in the lower quantity of liver used and the lack of pork skin used.

The word beuling, like the old Dutch bodelinc, the French boudin and the English “pudding,” derives from the Latin botulus, which means “sausage.” Originally beuling and sausage were synonymous in Dutch language. In a trial document from about 1590, found in the Judicial Archive of the city of Den Bosch two individuals are mentioned: they became the talk of the town because they ate "vlees ofte beuling" (meat or sausage) in a tavern called In De Hoywagen on a fasting-day. Over the course of the next centuries a more defined difference between sausage and beuling developed. Zierikhoven writes in 1791: "the sausages are distinguished into real worsten (sausages), sausijsen, being those made of chopped pork, and beulingen in which all sorts of edible things are put." Other mentions through the centuries show that this product was eaten not only in the down of Den Bosch, but throughout the region.

In 1930, Dutch food inspectors for the first time the clarified the characteristics of the Bossche Beuling, with regards the quantities of meat and meal that could be used. The present Food Regulation contains an exemption for traditional products like beuling, and it is clear that the present butchers put in more meat than they did in former days (and liver too) and that the product became more luxurious as living standards went up. The precise ingredients vary from one butcher to the other, and moreover, "all Den Bosch butchers who make Beuling do not know in the morning where they are going to make it from," according to Dutch celebrity Frans Vernix.

Production and consumption of this specialty product are restricted to the town of Den Bosch, in the southern central Netherlands. Bossche Beuling is made by a handful of artisan butchers from the end of September until Easter in the spring. No industrial version exists. Today, interest in sausage or pudding made from offal and “waste” products is diminished, and the labor intensive process required to make Bossche Beuling means that the future of its production is not guaranteed.