If you want to see how the sausage is made, you want to see a complex or messy process. You want to know the secrets, even if they are not very pleasing. We use this expression for any situation or process that happens away from the view of others. And most people would find that situation or process unpleasant.

In many an industry, the idiom “how the sausage gets made” connotes pulling away the facade of something to discover the unpleasant, even nasty process behind it.

sausage, meat product made of finely chopped and seasoned meat, which may be fresh, smoked, or pickled and which is then usually stuffed into a casing. Sausages of fish or poultry are also made. The word sausage, from the Latin salsus (“salted”), refers to a food-processing method that had been used for centuries.

Adolf Gobel came to the United States from Germany as a young man, in 1884. By 1891, he was in the meat business, going from butcher shop to butcher shop in Manhattan and Brooklyn, with a basket full of delicatessen products for sale.