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Recipe for Wienerwurst

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

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

Recipe for Wienerwurst

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 180°F (82°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the lean beef cuttings finely.

  2. Add the fat pork cuttings and chop until the mixture is a paste.

  3. Mix in the sausage flour and all the spices thoroughly.

  4. Add enough water to achieve the proper consistency.

Stuff and finish

  1. Stuff the mixture into sheep casings.

  2. Smoke the sausages.

  3. Place in hot water at 180°F (82°C) for five minutes to heat through.

  4. Dip in cold water and hang to dry.

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. Coriander + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together393 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Fat pork cuttings
Supplies fat that keeps the sausage juicy and gives it a smooth texture.
Lean beef cuttings
Provides the protein structure that binds the sausage when chopped into a paste.
Sausage flour
Absorbs moisture and helps the chopped mixture hold together and set firmly.
Coarse sea salt
Extracts and dissolves meat proteins so the mixture binds and holds water.

The step that matters

Chopping the meat to a paste. Chopping until the mixture is a smooth paste lets proteins be extracted and emulsify with fat, which gives the sausage its bind and even texture. Stopping early leaves a coarse, crumbly result.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

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