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Spanish Sausage

A pig sausage seasoned with mace, pepper, lemon peel, laurel, wine, and beef tongues, boiled and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spanish Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the pig's meat into a uniform mass, ensuring all bones are removed.

  2. Add coarse sea salt to the chopped meat.

  3. Mix together mace, black pepper, lemon peel, laurel leaves, Spanish wine, and beef tongues. Combine the spice mixture with the chopped meat thoroughly.

Shape and cook

  1. Stuff the pig's skin with the meat mixture, roll tightly, and secure with string. Wrap the sausage in strong muslin.

  2. Boil in a mixture of water, vinegar, and wine for one hour.

  3. Finish by exposing the sausage to mild, cold smoke.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + laureltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,666 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + laureltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,239 recipes

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

  5. Mace + laureltop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork (hind and fore quarters, back and ribs)
Provides the main bulk and fat that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and draws out moisture to help bind the mixture.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aromatic heat that complements the rich meat.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the flavour of the fatty meat.
Beef tongues
Contribute richness and a tender, savoury texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Boiling the wrapped sausage. Boiling for the full hour must be done at a gentle, steady temperature so the meat cooks through evenly without the casing bursting or the fat separating out.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, laurel, wine, beef, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, laurel, wine, beef, vinegar. 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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