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Berner Tongue Sausage

A sausage made from lean beef, pork fat, and diced hog tongues seasoned with salt, pepper, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork 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 ↓

Berner Tongue Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Grind the lean beef and fat pork while warm, not too finely.

  2. Mix salt, saltpeter, pepper, pimento, and cloves in water.

  3. Combine the meat with the spice mixture and add enough water for a suitable consistency.

  4. Cut the hog tongues into small cubes and mix them into the sausage mass.

Stuff and cure

  1. Stuff the mixture tightly into hog casings.

  2. Dry the sausages in open air for 1-2 days.

  3. Lightly smoke the sausages in warm smoke until they are light brown.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the sausages before serving.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Pork + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,515 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main lean meat that forms the body of the sausage.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender as it cooks.
Pickled hog tongues
Contribute their own texture and flavour as cubed pieces within the mass.
Saltpeter
Helps give cured meat its characteristic pink colour and preserving effect.

The step that matters

Dry the sausages in open air for 1-2 days. Drying lets the casing firm and the surface lose moisture, which helps the sausage hold its shape and keeps spoilage slower before smoking and boiling.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Clovethe original

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