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Minced Meat in Beef Bladders

A sausage made by stuffing minced pork and beef into beef bladders, then smoking and cooking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Minced Meat in Beef Bladders

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 135°F (57°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the mixture

  1. Combine pork cheek meat, beef cheek meat, and lean pork cuttings in a large bowl.

  2. Add H. M. P. flour, fine salt, white pepper, sugar, saltpeter, and powdered boric acid.

  3. Mix thoroughly and add water to achieve the desired consistency.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the mixture into beef bladders and tie securely.

  2. Smoke the bladders for 21 hours starting at 135°F (57°C) and finishing at 155°F (68°C).

  3. Cook the bladders for 4 hours starting at 170°F (77°C) and finishing at 165°F (74°C).

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 + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

  3. Meat + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pork cheek meat
Provides fat and protein for the bulk of the sausage filling.
Beef cheek meat
Adds protein and flavor to the filling, giving it a rich, meaty body.
Saltpeter
Helps the meat keep its pink color and gives the cured flavor.
Fine salt
Seasons the filling and draws out proteins that bind the mixture together.

The step that matters

Smoke and cook in stages. The bladders must rise gradually through the listed temperatures so the interior cooks evenly without the casing splitting or the meat drying out. Holding the correct temperature range keeps the texture tender and juicy.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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

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