Melsat is a spicy sausage made of a stuffing based on stale bread and pork offal (especially the Occitan melsat, liver and throat) stuffed into pork entrails – shaped long and thin in small intestine casing in Aveyron, or in the large intestine casing in the Lacaune mountains (Tarn). The meaty parts are previously mixed with crumbled stale bread, eggs, salt, pepper, nutmeg and possibly thyme. Then the melsat is cooked in simmering water – for 40 minutes to more than 2 hours after stuffing. Very pale grey ream-coloured, it looks like a galabar pudding, 200 to 400g, or shaped like a U, weighing 400 to 500g.
Two variants for the same recipe seem to exist side by side, at least since the beginning of the 20th century: the first uses offal and seems to be rustic in origin, while the second, more urbane, like the one Prosper Montagné identified in the 1920s, like a large white pudding made with bread, eggs and sausage meat.
Melsat is pan-grilled or cooked in soup; it can also be dried like a sausage.
It is basically a household dish made to use off cuts of pork during hog killing. It is the preparation that requires time, and today it is little known by younger generations.
Back to the archive >Deux variantes de la même recette semblent coexister, au moins depuis le début du XXème siècle : la première utilisant des abats semble être d’origine paysanne, alors que la seconde, plus urbaine, comme celle que Prosper Montagné a identifié dans les années 1920, parle d’un gros boudin blanc fait de pain, d’œufs et de chair à saucisse.
Le melsat se consomme grillé à la poêle ou cuit dans la soupe ; il peut aussi être séché comme une saucisse.
Il s’agissait essentiellement d’un plat de ménage destiné à valoriser les bas morceaux de porc lors de l’abattage du cochon. C’est une préparation qui demande du temps et qui aujourd’hui reste peu connue des jeunes générations.
