Skip to main content
Preserve

To Keep Sausage Meats

A method for curing and preserving sausage meats using salt, saltpeter, sugar, and sweet pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Meat and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Keep Sausage Meats

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cure

  1. Chill the sausage meats thoroughly.

  2. Mix the salt, saltpeter, and sugar together.

Cure the meats

  1. Combine the mixture with the meats in a large container.

  2. Pack the meats tightly and fill the container completely.

  3. Seal the container airtight.

  4. Cure the meats for 12 to 25 days, depending on the size of the pieces.

Finish

  1. After curing, chop the meats to the desired consistency and add flavoring ingredients.

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

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

  2. Meat + sugartop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,866 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Sausage meats
Form the bulk of the product, providing the protein and fat that the cure acts on.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, helping preserve it during the long cure.
Saltpeter
Supplies nitrate that cures the meat and helps give it a stable pink color.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and feeds the curing process, adding mild sweetness.
Sweet pickle
Adds liquid and flavor to the cure, carrying the seasoning through the meat.

The step that matters

Pack the meats tightly and fill the container completely. Air pockets let spoilage microbes and oxidation develop, so a tight pack and airtight seal keep the cure even and safe over the long curing period.

“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

Green Corn PuddingGreen Corn Pudding64 recipesCornmeal mushCornmeal mush12 recipes