The oldest cookery writing in the world says that now is the best time of the year to enjoy pork sausages. In Spain, people eat the meat from any part of the pig – even the tail!

NEITHER chorizos, nor black pudding, nor longanizas, nor ham, nor any type of the extensive range of Spanish sausages fall out of the sky.

It’s difficult not to believe this, given how many there are about, in much the same way as kids are often  convinced that milk and eggs are made by machines in some warehouse on an industrial estate on the edge of town.

But, no: a considerable and very important part of the sausage, or embutido, is in the way it is made from pork (other types of meat can also be used for them).

But pigs, like any other animals traditionally eaten, will not give their meat if we ask them or even beg them – they have to be killed first.

In a number of popular fiestas in Spain the 'matanza del cerdo', or pig-slaughtering, has indeed often been one of the acts.

However, times are changing in Spain, or certainly they have in the last three or four decades and with it, the 'matanza del cerdo' has all but disappeared.

It’s not that the pig escapes unharmed in the face of human hunger, though – just that they are killed for meat in the same way nowadays as are other livestock.

Pork then reaches the table in a format that is almost unidentifiable as a pig, but more resembling a sausage.

Despite this the 'matanza del cerdo' used to be a ritual that represented just another sign of wealth, since a family who kept a couple of pigs had enough for a varied and consistent diet.

I won’t describe here in detail the process of the matanza del cerdo, since our sensitivity levels have changed'somewhat and we find what used to be considered a natural process – that of turning farm animals into meat – now'a bit too much for us.

Ángel Muro, in his extensive treaty on culinary matters, 'El practicón', wrote in 1894: “Food prepared with the many parts that make up the pig should not be eaten except between November until the end of April because'this is the time of year when the colder climates excite the appetite, invigorate the digestive organs and additionally, there are municipal bye-laws that prohibit the killing of pigs and the sale of their fresh meat between Easter and All Saints’ Day.”

In effect, it seems the matanza del cerdo took place during those months when the thermometers plummeted.

Nowadays, meat, like so many other foodstuffs, can be perfectly preserved in fridges and freezers, but until such things came into existence the human race invented methods to prevent food from going off – like salting, preserves, or sausages.

Sausages comprised stuffing the guts of an animal (they could also be artificial) with minced meat, certain vegetables (onions in the case of black pudding sausages or 'morcilla', for example) and herbs and condiments.

Larger cuts of meat, like ham, were salted. In any case, after being dried out in the appropriate places, they were then strung up as high as possible.

Yet not all meat was used to make sausages. Part of it was consumed immediately and, at least beforehand, another part was fried and put into jars of olive oil, a type of battering. They believed this type of meat in oil was second to none.

As mass industry did not exist, sausages, if not in every house, certainly in every street or every town or village were very similar and at the same time very different to that of the nearest town or village. This is why there are so many different names and varieties of sausages, or 'embutidos'.

Given that we have started with pork and have left aside other types of meat, we’ll stay on the subject of pigs.

The fattest and clumsiest-looking animal on the farm receives, in Spanish, a number of disparaging names that are also used to describe dirty, lazy or gluttonous people.

'Puerco', 'cochino', 'gorrino' and other similar titles mean much the same as ‘hog’ or ‘swine’ in English and the pig gets lumbered with these because of its tendency to roll around in the mud and get dirty, and because of its far-from-elegant way of eating.

Yet in Spain, not even the tail is wasted when it comes to cooking with pork – the tail is excellent in a baked rice, or arroz al horno, for example – nor its trotters (stuffed pigs’ trotters are simply exquisite) almost as if the pig were trying to compensate for being one of the muckiest and least attractive animals on the farm.