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Recipe for Polish Sausage

A smoked sausage made from beef, pork, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 Polish Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 120°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat coarsely.

  2. Mix all ingredients thoroughly.

Stuff and link

  1. Stuff the mixture into wide hog casings, linking them 8 inches long.

Smoke

  1. Cook in a smokehouse at 120°F to 170°F for about 3.5 hours until the sausage has a wrinkled appearance.

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. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Marjoram + garlictop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork head and cheek meat
Supplies most of the meat and fat that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep a pink colour and resist spoilage during smoking.
Flour
Absorbs moisture and helps bind the mixture so it holds together when cooked.
Sugar
Balances the salt and adds flavour, helping the casing brown in the smokehouse.
Garlic
Adds a pungent aroma that defines the sausage's savoury flavour.
Marjoram
Adds a warm, herbal aroma to the sausage.

The step that matters

Smoking at a low, rising temperature. Cooking slowly between 120°F and 170°F keeps the fat and proteins from overheating and drying out. The gradual heat also lets the casing dry into the wrinkled surface the recipe calls for.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

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