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Liver Sausage Test

A liver sausage made from beef or hog livers, pork fat, ham skins, spices, onions, flour, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Liver Sausage Test

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

  1. Cook the fat pork cuttings until they weigh 94 pounds, noting a loss of 19%.

  2. Chop the livers, pork cuttings, and ham skins finely.

Mix and stuff

  1. Mix the chopped meats with white pepper, marjoram, coarse sea salt, onions, and flour.

  2. Add water to achieve the proper consistency.

  3. Stuff the mixture into beef rounds.

Cook

  1. Cook in water at 180°F (82°C) for twenty minutes.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  4. Marjoram + flourtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Marjoram + oniontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,056 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Livers
Provide the main body and rich, characteristic flavor of the sausage.
Fat pork cuttings
Add fat for moisture and a smooth, tender texture when cooked.
Ham skins
Contribute gelatin that helps the sausage hold together and set when cooled.
Flour
Absorbs liquid and helps bind the mixture so it holds its shape.
Onions
Add sweetness and aromatic depth to the mixture.

The step that matters

Add water to achieve the proper consistency. Water loosens the mixture so it stuffs and cooks evenly; too little leaves it stiff and dense, too much makes it loose and prone to splitting. Adjust by feel before stuffing.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, ham, marjoram, onion, flour):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, ham, marjoram, onion, flour. 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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