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Smoked or Country Sausage

A sausage made from lean pork, beef, salt, pepper, red pepper, marjoram, mace, and water, smoked in hog casings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Smoked or Country Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and sprinkle the seasoning over it.

  2. Grind the mixture using a meat grinder with the small plate.

  3. Store the mixture in a cool place for 24 to 36 hours.

Stuff and smoke

  1. Add a little water to the mixture and stuff it into hog casings.

  2. Smoke the sausages in a very cool smoke until they reach a dark mahogany color.

  3. Cook the sausage thoroughly before eating.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Marjoram + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together767 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pork + marjoramtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together883 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides most of the bulk and meaty texture of the sausage.
Beef
Adds extra meaty flavour and body to the blend.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out proteins so the mixture binds.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that flavours the whole sausage.
Sweet marjoram
Contributes a warm, herbal aroma typical of sausage seasoning.

The step that matters

Store the mixture in a cool place for 24 to 36 hours. Resting the ground meat cold lets the salt penetrate and dissolve proteins, which helps the sausage bind and hold together. Keeping it cool prevents bacterial growth during the rest.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, pepper, marjoram. 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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