Grape pizza and blueberry glazed pork may not be up your alley. Fortunately, Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS) hasn’t tried to ruin one food with a creative twist: the fan-favorite breakfast sausage. Although not every dining hall on campus has hot breakfast, every student has gotten the opportunity to experience Harvard sausage in one way or another.
HUDS offers a few types of breakfast sausages, including chicken, pork links, pork patties, and some vegan options that don’t look very edible. If you could only eat one type of HUDS sausage for the rest of your life, which sausage would you choose? I’m here to help you determine the answer to this life-altering question.
The pork sausage links are the worst option out of the real meat sausages. This is what you’d normally find on your plate at an IHOP or a free hotel breakfast. It’s not that I have a vendetta against pork sausage links, but, in the Harvard dhalls, I choose to steer clear. The links are connected with a weird outer layer that makes it seem as though you’re eating a part of the sausage that’s not meant to be ingested. As the sausages rest in a silver tub, they accumulate a lot of excess oil, making the links extra slippery rather than crispy. In the case of the pork sausage link, it’s not so much an issue of flavor, but rather an issue of texture as the greasy outside is met with a mushy inside.
Moving up the ladder, we have the pork sausage patties. The thinness of the patty allows for the outer layer to be well-cooked, creating the perfect textured bite. As a firm believer in “shape makes it taste better,” the patty form truly transforms the entire sausage experience. As a born and raised New Yorker, I can also make a credible judgment on the dining halls’ so-called “bagels.” A bite of these plastic bag bagels is not the way to start off your day, but a sausage patty in the middle is a game-changer. Add some questionable eggs, a slice of cheese, and some ketchup (or hot sauce if you’re feeling spicy!), and suddenly you’ve got yourself a subpar sausage, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich!
Finally, the moment you have all been waiting for. The most elite sausage of them all, the sausage that takes the throne: chicken sausage. No drug can replicate the feeling of looking at the breakfast menu and seeing “chicken sausage” written in sunset orange. The chicken sausage comes packing a punch of flavor, and you can really see each individual seasoning in its cross-section. The thickness, reminiscent of more of a dinner sausage, causes a great crisp around the edges. You can take the sweet or savory path with this one, dipping the sausage in either maple syrup or ketchup. Personally, I think the chicken sausage-maple syrup combo is a great mix of sweet and salty. Just don’t check your cholesterol levels after.
To conclude, I’d suggest going chicken sausage first, pork patty second, pork link third, and then just saying a prayer if you’re vegan. Next time you find yourself at a HUDS hot breakfast, don’t be afraid to get yourself all up in that sausage. You might discover a new-found passion for suspicious-looking meat!
Ilana Feder ’26 (ilanafeder@college.harvard.edu) writes Arts for the Independent.