New Orleans, as you may know, is famous not just for its drinks (such as the Sazerac) but also for its food. If you like Cajun cuisine, you’re in for a treat. If, on the other hand, you disdain shrimp, crawfish, shellfish, or other fish, and can’t be induced to eat andouille, well, your options are a bit fewer.
Andouille! Who among carnivores would not want an andouille? They’re so very delicious, both the large andouilles and their smaller unsmoked kin the andouillettes. And yet we do find some people who, though they may not dislike pigs, nonetheless hate their guts – and it’s the pigs’ guts that make these sausages. And even if you don’t mind what animal bits go into the sausages, the seasonings can be rather lively, and the garlic or peppers could be their undoing.
And do we even know how to say andouille, for that matter? There seems to be a dispute going on – do we have a resolution? Yes and no. The word, as you may have deduced, is from French, and in French it’s said as two syllables, /ɑ̃.duj/, something between “on dooey” and “on dwee” (allowing that the n is really just a nasalization of the vowel before). In England, you might hear it as “on doo we” (or “undo we”) but in America, including New Orleans, you’re more likely to hear “ann doo we” – like in “and do we know, or don’t we?” (You can hear my butcher in Toronto say it in my sausages pronunciation tip. As to andouillette, I think if you say “and do we yet” you’ll get away with it.)
But however a word or sausage may taste, it might be somewhat removed from what went into making it. In the case of andouille, which is produced by putting pigs’ guts inside pigs’ guts, the name comes from Medieval Latin inductilis, which comes from Latin induco, ‘I put in’ or ‘I overlay’ (or actually quite a few other related senses). That -duc- is the same one as in duct, conduct, produce, deduce, induce, introduce, education, and so many other words having originally to do with leading or putting. (Yes, it’s even related to duke.)
And if you think andouille is somewhat removed from induco, let me introduce you to another lovely bit of food and language: ’nduja, pronounced “’n’ do ya,” a Calabrian sausage. It’s very spicy, like Calabrese salami, but it’s spreadable – once you cut open the sausage, you get a thick textured paste. What’s happened to the ingredients of the sausage is about like what’s happened to the ingredients of the word, because ’nduja – like what it names – is derived from andouille. It was introduced to southern Italy by members of the French house of Anjou in the 1200s.
But the sausage isn’t originally from Anjou. It’s from a bit farther north, in Normandy. In fact, its historical home is the town of Vire, which is also, indirectly and etymologically, the ancestral home of vaudeville. The sausages made it across the Atlantic and down to New Orleans thanks to people from southwest France who came to Canada and then were forced to move to Louisiana.
And if I’m dining on Cajun food with someone who doesn’t fancy it, I pronounce andouille as “And do we not want that? I’ll have yours, then.”
Sesquiotica 