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High Grade Sausage and Bologna

A smoked sausage made from a blend of beef, pork, and hog meats seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

High Grade Sausage and Bologna

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 155°F (68°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Trim out all gristle, blood, and veins from the meats.

  2. Chop the meats finely and mix with the seasonings and enough ice water to achieve the proper consistency.

Stuff and link

  1. Stuff the mixture into wide sheep casings, making links about 4½ inches long.

Smoke and cook

  1. Smoke the sausages for 2 hours at 155°F (68°C).

  2. Cook the sausages in water at 175°F (80°C) for 5 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

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

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

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

  5. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef trimmings
Provides the main lean meat and protein structure that holds the sausage together.
Hog cheek meat
Adds fat and connective tissue, contributing moisture and a tender texture.
Pork trimmings
Supplies fat for juiciness and richness in the finished sausage.
Sausage flour
Absorbs water and fat, helping the emulsion set firmly and retain moisture.
Coarse sea salt
Extracts meat proteins for binding and seasons the sausage throughout.

The step that matters

Chopping and mixing with ice water. Keeping the mix cold while chopping and adding ice water prevents fat from melting and smearing, which would make the emulsion break and the texture greasy and crumbly.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, pork, mace, pepper, sugar, 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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