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Recipe for Summer Sausage

A cured sausage made from lean beef and pork, seasoned, formed into loaves, smoked, and air-dried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Recipe for Summer Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the beef; add the pork and continue chopping until medium fine.

  2. Add the back fat and continue chopping all together for about two minutes.

  3. Mix in the seasoning evenly after adding the pork.

  4. Form the mixture into loaves, ensuring to exclude all air, and refrigerate overnight.

Stuff the casings

  1. Use well-washed beef or hog casings, trimmed of fat and dried.

  2. Stuff the casings carefully, excluding air.

Dry and smoke

  1. Hang the sausages in a dry place with good air circulation until they turn a pronounced red color.

  2. Cold smoke the sausages for 24 to 36 hours, avoiding frost exposure.

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

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Pepper and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Lean beef
Provides the main protein structure that binds the sausage as it sets.
Lean pork
Adds protein and body, helping the mixture hold together when sliced.
Back fat
Supplies fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender during drying and smoking.
Saltpetre
Helps develop the pronounced red color and cured flavor of the sausage.
Granulated sugar
Adds mild sweetness that balances the salt and rounds out the flavor.

The step that matters

Excluding air when forming and stuffing. Air pockets left in the meat can spoil the sausage and cause uneven drying, so the mixture should be packed firmly with no trapped air.

“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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