The Etymology of Chorizo
Chorizo entered English in 1846 as a Spanish loanword for the country’s famous paprika-cured pork sausage. The word itself is older — recorded in Old Spanish as çoriço around 1400 — but its precise etymology is disputed. The most widely held view derives it from Late Latin salsicia, the same root that gives Italian salsiccia and French saucisse, via a hypothesised Vulgar Latin form *salsīcium. Other proposals connect it to a Latin term for cooked pieces of meat, or to a pre-Roman Iberian source. Whichever is right, chorizo as we now know it is a relatively recent product: paprika, the smoked or sweet pepper that gives modern chorizo its red colour and signature flavour, only reached Spain after the Columbian exchange in the 1500s. Mexican chorizo, by contrast, is typically uncured and uses chillies; Portuguese chouriço is the closest sibling, both linguistically and gastronomically.