The longeole

MAIN INGREDIENTS

Longeole is produced predominantly during the winter months. The sausage’s main ingredients are pork meat, lard from the pig’s cheeks and/or neck, raw pork rind, and whole fennel seeds.

THE APPEARANCE AND TASTE OF LONGEOLE

Longeole is a raw charcuterie product, un-smoked and un-aged, made exclusively from pork meat and fennel seeds. The sausage casing is made from pork or beef intestine. The sausage has an elongated shape, the texture of the meat when cooked is unctuous, and to the nose the cooked sausage has a blended aromatic smell of meat, seasonings and fennel. The distinctive Longeole logo includes the IGP mark (which stands for Indication Géographique Protégée known in English as Protected Geographical Indication or PGI) of the Swiss AOC-IGP association.

PRODUCTION ZONE

The geographic area within which all phases of Longeole sausage-making must be carried out is the canton of Geneva. The birth, raising, fattening, killing and butchery of the animals must take place in Switzerland.

HISTORY

The history of Longeole in Geneva is said to date back to the late 17th century, following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 that once again had French Protestants seeking refuge in Geneva. A number of these were from the region of Dauphiné in France. Oral story-telling at the time had it that Longeole was invented by a monk known as Père Longeot at the Abbey of Pommier who had the idea of throwing some pork rind and fennel seed into a standard pork sausage recipe.

Documentary mention of Longeole in Genevese cookbooks ensued, for the first time in the Glossaire genevois by Aimé-Jean Gaudy-Lefort in 1820. By the 1930s, Longeole was being included as a flagship Geneva product in a book called Le Bien-manger à Genève, Quelques renseignements sur les produits alimentaires du Canton. Recettes de plats genevois which in English means: Eating Well in Geneva, Some Information about the Canton’s Alimentary Products and Recipes for Genevese Dishes.

Around this time, Geneva’s produce farmers, working hand in hand with the local association of charcuterie producers, staged events on both the Left and Right Banks of Geneva City called ‘’Days’’ or ‘’Longeole Fairs’’ which often drew between 15,000 and 20,000 visitors.

HOW TO COOK LONGEOLE SAUSAGES

Longeole is marked by typical pork flavors highlighted with seasoning, and a core taste of fennel seed. Cooked, the sausage has an aromatic smell and an unctuous texture. Longeole IGP also has unique cooking requirements: it must be poached for between two and a half and three hours in simmering water so that the meat tenderizes and absorbs the pork rinds’ gelatinous juices.