Skip to main content
Main

Farmer Sausage

A pork and beef sausage with back fat, salt, sugar, saltpeter, and white pepper, smoked after curing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Farmer Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the lean beef as fine as for pork sausage.

  2. Cut the back fat into 1-inch square pieces, about ¼ inch thick.

  3. Mix the pork, beef, and back fat together and chop into quarter-inch cubes.

Cure and rest

  1. Allow the mixture to rest in a cooler for 12 to 15 hours before stuffing.

  2. Stuff the mixture into beef middles, 14 inches long, ensuring they are solid and free from air bubbles.

  3. Hang the sausages in a cooler for seven days before smoking.

Smoke

  1. Smoke the sausages in cold smoke for 24 to 36 hours.

  2. Make this sausage only in cold weather and do not add water.

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. Pork + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together791 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl butyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Beef + white peppertop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork trimmings
Supplies most of the body and fat for the sausage's main texture.
Lean beef
Adds meaty flavour and firmness to the mix.
Back fat
Provides fat that keeps the sausage juicy as it dries.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture for curing.
Saltpeter
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured sausage its colour.

The step that matters

Keep the sausage cold throughout. Fat softens and smears when warm, and bacteria multiply faster at higher temperatures. Keeping the meat, resting and smoking in cold conditions protects texture and food safety.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Gingerfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Pepperfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes