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Smoked Pork Sausage

A smoked sausage made from beef chuck, salt pork, fresh pork, mace, cayenne pepper, and rubbed sage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Smoked Pork Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sausage

  1. Chop and mix the beef chuck, salt pork trimmings, and fresh pork trimmings well.

  2. Season the mixture with mace, cayenne pepper, and rubbed sage.

  3. Form the mixture into sausage links.

Dry and smoke

  1. Dry the links for a short time.

  2. Smoke the links for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. If desired for preservation, add borax to keep the sausage sweet and wholesome.

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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef chuck
Provides lean meat that gives the sausage its main body and bite.
Salt pork trimmings
Adds fat, which keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it cooks.
Fresh pork trimmings
Adds meat and fat that help bind the sausage and keep it tender.
Cayenne pepper
Provides heat and a sharp, peppery bite that cuts through the rich meat.
Rubbed sage
Contributes an earthy, aromatic flavor characteristic of traditional sausage.

The step that matters

Smoke the links for 1.5 to 2 hours. Smoke must reach the surface while the links are still moist after drying, so the coating absorbs flavor evenly. Smoking too long or at too high heat can dry the casing and overcook the interior, while too little time leaves the sausage under-flavored.

Swap the mace

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

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

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