Why it works: Liver and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓
Liver Sausage
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Cure the meat and fat in a brine made from 1 lb. Freeze-Em-Pickle, 7 lbs. coarse sea salt, and 5 gallons of water for 1-2 weeks.
Chill the livers for 24 hours, then cut them into strips and cure in the brine for 2 weeks.
Prepare the livers
Scald the livers by pouring boiling water over them or dipping them in boiling water until cooked through.
Cool the livers in ice water or running cold water until completely chilled.
Prepare the meat and combine
Cook the pork necks, heads, or bellies and remove all meat from the bones.
Chop the meat finely, then grind it through a fine plate of an Enterprise Grinder.
Add the ground livers to the ground meat and mix well.
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.
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Liver + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,606 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hog livers
- Provide the main body and rich, strong flavor of the sausage.
- Pork necks
- Add fat and meat that keep the sausage moist and easy to spread.
- Freeze-em-pickle
- Cures the meat so it holds color and flavor during the long brine.
The step that matters
Scald the livers until cooked through. Livers must be cooked through for safety, and the scalding sets their texture so they grind smoothly without turning grainy or raw in the center.
“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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