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To Make Wienerwurst

A smoked sausage made from pork and beef trimmings, sausage flour, spices, salt, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Make Wienerwurst

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the pork and beef trimmings finely and mix them thoroughly.

  2. Add sausage flour, black pepper, white pepper, garlic, coriander, allspice, mace, salt, fine salt, and sugar to the meat mixture.

  3. Mix all ingredients uniformly.

  4. Add water and coloring to achieve the proper consistency and color.

Stuff and smoke

  1. Stuff the mixture into narrow sheep casings.

  2. Smoke the sausages for about 2 hours, starting at 160°F (70°C) and gradually reducing to 150°F (65°C).

Heat, cool and dry

  1. After smoking, place the sausages in hot water at 180°F (82°C) for 5 minutes.

  2. Dip the sausages in cold water for a few seconds.

  3. Hang them to cool and dry in a well-ventilated area.

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. Garlic + coriandertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,474 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + coriandertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,949 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

Pork trimmings
Fat content supplies juiciness and a tender bite in the finished sausage.
Beef trimmings
Lean protein gives the sausage its meaty body and structure when chopped and mixed.
Sausage flour
Binds the meat and absorbs moisture so the mixture holds together and stays juicy.
Sugar
Adds a mild sweetness that balances the salt and spices and aids browning during smoking.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps extract proteins so the mixture binds.

The step that matters

Mixing the meat with water and coloring. Water and coloring must be added only until the mixture reaches the right consistency and color. Salt and protein extraction during mixing create the binding that holds the sausage together, so the mix must be uniform and not overworked or watery.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, flour, meat, pepper, garlic, coriander. 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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