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Spanish Red Sausage

A cured sausage made from beef, pork, bacon, and spices, wrapped in bacon and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Spanish Red Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef, pork, and bacon into small pieces.

  2. Mix the meats with the coarse sea salt, white pepper, saltpetre, paprika, sugar, and grated nutmegs.

  3. Add the boiled cube bacon and pistachios.

  4. Form the mixture into a ball.

  5. Let the ball rest in a warm room overnight.

Assemble the sausage

  1. Cut thin slices of bacon.

  2. Spread the sausage mixture on them to a depth of 1 inch.

  3. Place the pickled, boiled, and skinned pig's tongue in the center.

  4. Cover with another layer of sausage mixture.

  5. Fold the bacon around the sausage mass.

  6. Place it in a casing, sealing both ends.

Dry, smoke and boil

  1. Hang the sausage to dry for one day.

  2. Smoke the sausage in warm smoke.

  3. Boil for 1 to 1.5 hours.

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. Nutmeg + pistachiotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pork + pistachiotop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together109 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main lean meat structure and bulk of the sausage.
Pork
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the sausage tender and juicy as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that melts into the mixture and moistens the lean meat.
Saltpetre
Helps cure the meat, giving it a pink color and firmer texture.
Pistachios
Add crunch and nutty flavor against the soft meat.

The step that matters

Assemble the sausage. Spreading the mixture to an even depth and centring the tongue lets the sausage cook and slice evenly. Sealing the casing well keeps moisture in and prevents air pockets that spoil during drying.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, sugar, nutmeg, pistachio. 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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