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Country Pork Sausages

A sausage made from lean pork and chine fat seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, and summer savory, then stuffed into intestines or bags.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Country Pork Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the lean pork and fat.

  2. Mix in the salt, black pepper, sage, and summer savory with your hands.

  3. Taste the mixture to ensure it has the right flavor.

Stuff and store

  1. Stuff the mixture into cleaned hog intestines or long, narrow muslin bags.

  2. Fill the bags with the meat and seal with melted lard.

  3. Hang the sausages in a cool, dry, dark place.

  4. Alternatively, pack the meat in jars, pour melted lard over it, and cover.

Cook and serve

  1. When ready to use, form the meat into small round cakes and fry until brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Pork + summer savorytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean fresh pork
Provides the lean meat that forms the bulk of the sausage.
Chine fat
Adds fat for moisture and a juicy texture during cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out flavor and bind the mixture.
Ground sage
Contributes the dominant savory, aromatic flavour typical of country sausage.
Summer savory
Adds a peppery, herbal aroma that complements the sage.

The step that matters

Mix in the seasonings by hand. Seasoning must be evenly distributed through the chopped meat and fat, since uneven salt or spice leaves some bites bland or overly salty. Tasting the mixture before stuffing lets you correct the seasoning while it can still be adjusted.

Swap the summer savory

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, sage):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Summer savorythe original
  4. Rosemaryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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