The rightful shape for a
sausage is square. I say this because when one has no
grill the only option for
cooking sausages is in a
frying pan. The traditional
circular shape of sausages is not
conducive to being evenly cooked in a frying pan. What usually seems to happen is the sausage starts to bend into a slight U shape as it cooks, with the sausage ends bending up away from the pan.
Coupled with the roundness of the sausage it proves very hard to
rotate the sausage in order to
evenly cook it all over. Every time you attempt to move the sausage it rolls back to the original position. Obviously an
improperly cooked sausage can lead to a
substandard meal, or worse still,
food poisoning.
Therefore, the rightful shape for a sausage should be square - although this may not prevent the bending of the sausage it should alleviate the rolling back to the original position, and thus one can better reach the nirvana of the perfectly evenly cooked sausage.
It is worth pointing out I'm referring to the European-style sausage, the stalwart of the English Breakfast, not its American cousin, which I believe is more of a patty of sausagemeat.