Skip to main content
Main

Pork and Beef Sausage Recipes

A sausage made from ground beef and pork, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, ginger, sage, thyme, sugar, and red pepper, then stuffed into sheep casings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork and Beef Sausage Recipes

Ingredients

Directions

Grind the meat

  1. Grind the beef through a 7/64 inch plate, adding cold water as needed.

  2. Grind the pork cheek meat through a 1-inch plate and mix in the whole pork trimmings.

Stuff the casings

  1. Stuff the mixture into sheep casings.

Smoke and cook

  1. For smoking, hang the sausages and smoke for 4 hours at 120°F (49°C).

  2. Cook the sausages for 2½ to 3 hours at 160°F (71°C).

Make the all-pork version

  1. For an all-pork sausage, mix 60% lean ham and fat back trimmings with 40% fat.

  2. Season 150 pounds of this mixture with 3 pounds coarse sea salt, 7 ounces white pepper, ½ ounce mace, ½ ounce ginger, 3½ ounces rubbed sage, ½ ounce thyme, 2 ounces sugar, and ½ ounce red pepper.

  3. Stuff into ½ inch sheep casings in 4-inch links.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  3. Ginger + sagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together157 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + thymetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together421 recipes

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

  5. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef head meat and trimmings
Provides lean protein and meaty texture that forms the body of the sausage.
Pork cheek meat
Adds fat and protein that give the sausage juiciness and a tender bite.
Pork trimmings
Supplies extra fat, which keeps the sausage moist during cooking.
Rubbed sage
Contributes the characteristic aroma of the sausage.

The step that matters

Cook the sausages to 160°F (71°C). Cooking to a set internal temperature sets the meat proteins and fat. Stopping early leaves the sausage soft and undercooked inside.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, pork, mace, ginger, sage, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, pork, mace, ginger, sage, thyme. 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes