In the UK and Ireland, sausages are a very popular and common feature of the national diet and popular culture. British sausages and Irish sausages are normally made from raw (i.e., uncooked, uncured, unsmoked) pork, beef, venison or other meats mixed with a variety of herbs and spices and cereals, many recipes of which are traditionally associated with particular regions (for example Cumberland sausages). They normally contain a certain amount of rusk or bread-rusk, and are traditionally cooked by frying, grilling or baking. They are most typically long, the filling compressed by twisting the casing into concatenated "links" into the sausage skin, traditionally made from the prepared intestine of the slaughtered animal; most commonly a pig.