The word sausage, from the Latin salsus (“salted”), refers to a food-processing method that had been used for centuries. Various forms of sausages were known in ancient Babylonia, Greece, and Rome, and early North American Indians made pemmican, a compressed dried meat-and-berry cake.

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.

The Sumerians, a people living in Ancient Mesopotamia, invented sausage. They invented sausage in around 3,100 BCE. Although, sausages have been improved with many variations worldwide over the last 5,000 years.