Saveloy: isn’t that a kind of cabbage?
No, it’s not a kind of cabbage. That’s Savoy.
A saveloy is “a type of highly seasoned sausage, usually bright red, normally boiled and available in fish and chip shops around England.”
Merriam-Webster traces the word’s journey into English:
modification of French cervelas, from Middle French, from Old Italian cervellata, literally, pig’s brains, from cervello brain, from Latin cerebellum.I came across saveloy while reading E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, trans. Anthea Bell (1999). I lack the patience to find out what was going on in the German — perhaps some kind of wurst.
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[After having the question nag at me while I was walking.]
The word in German in Cervelaten, plural of Cervelat, first found in Rabelais (1522). I searched the German text at Project Gutenberg for Pinscher, which took me to the paragraph with the Cervelaten.
Also from this novel
“Scholarly voracity” : “My little right paw” : Reading and writing in the dark : “O Heaven, were my whiskers neglected!”
comments: 9
Zervelatwurst?
Very close! I finally had to find it: it’s Cervelaten, plural of Cervelat. I found it by searching for Pinscher in the Project Gutenberg text. That took me to the paragraph, and there was the sausage, along with Grützen (groats) and Lebern (liver). I’d tried searching for Gehirnwurst (DeepL’s suggestion for “brain sausage”) with no luck.
I think it’s a nice touch on the part of the translator to choose something so clearly English — I think it suits this wildly playful work.
Well, it's not universally English! Where I grew up near Guildford (half way between London and the south coast) you could easily get them, but they become less common as yo go north, and you would probably struggle to find anyone who knew what you meant by the time you got to Scotland. So it's kind of regional-English rather than everywhere-English (the now-northern-dwelling cynic in me says of course an online source thinks that something in the south of the country is available everywhere, seeing as how many online sources are London-centric and forget about regional differences :) )
Wikipedia adds “It is not well known in other parts of the United Kingdom” and mentions popularity in the south. If you look at the Talk page for the article, you'll see some (amusing, I think) conversation about where saveloys are to be found.
Me, I have no pig in this race. : )
Qui veut chasser une migraine
N’a qu'à boire toujours du bon
Et à tenir sa table pleine
De cervelas et de jambons.
Old song by unknown author, first printed 1615 in Gabriel Bataille's (1575-1630) Airs de différents autheurs mis en tablature de luth
That's wonderful, Tororo.
I’ll add a plain (non-rhyming) translation:
If you want to chase away a migraine
Drink nothing but the good stuff
And keep your table full
Of cervelas and jambons
You made things perfectly clear! :)
"What should we have for lunch? Schnitzel?"
"We could serve a lot wurst."
Strangely enough, the last food in the Murr series is liver, which reminds me that for months I’ve been wanting to write a post about livery, which is one strange, multipurpose word.
More puns: a reader sent along a link to a ukelele trio’s webpage: Stompin’ at The Saveloy.
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