Estonia

Estonia's sausage tradition runs through the autumn pig slaughter and the winter that follows. Once the snow set in, every farm in the country preserved the year's pork in three forms: salted, smoked, and bound into blood sausage. The verivorst — barley-thickened pork-blood sausage — became the spine of the Christmas table, baked in the oven with butter alongside roast pork and pickled pumpkin and served with cold lingonberry jam. Almost no Estonian holiday meal goes without it. The other Baltic specialty is the kama-fed pig, raised on grain and rye and slaughtered just before Jõulud — a meat with the slightly nutty taste that the country's blood sausages pull from.

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Sausages from Estonia

Verivorst

Estonia

Estonia's Christmas blood sausage. Pork blood thickened with pearl barley and onion, bound with fatback, seasoned with marjoram and a heavy hand of black pepper, stuffed into pig intestine and baked rather than smoked. Served from the oven with a knob of butter melting on top, alongside sauerkraut (hapukapsas), roast potatoes, and a spoon of cold lingonberry jam on the rim of the plate. Almost no Jõulud — Estonian Christmas — happens without a tray of these on the table.

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