Skip to main content
Main

Russian Polony

Russian Polony is a smoked sausage made from ham, beef, ox tongues, and bacon, seasoned with garlic, shallots, juniper, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Garlic and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,000 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Russian Polony

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Peel the boiled ox tongues, discarding the roots and tips.

  2. Cut the ham, beef, and tongues into small dice and pound them separately into smooth pastes with gum tragacanth and fresh butter.

  3. Cut the bacon into small cubes, ensuring no rind or gristle remains.

Mix and mellow

  1. Mix all the meats together with minced garlic, shallots, juniper berries, Jamaica pepper, black peppercorns, sea salt, and sugar.

  2. Season the mixture well and place it in a jar for a week to mellow.

  3. After a week, work the mixture for half an hour.

Fill and tie

  1. Soak the largest ox intestines in lukewarm saltwater, then dry them.

  2. Fill the intestines with the meat mixture, ensuring to keep out air by applying even pressure and pricking only where necessary.

  3. Make the polonies about a foot long and set them aside until the next day.

  4. Repeat the pressure and tie them up securely.

Cook, dry and smoke

  1. Boil the polonies in water with a little salt and saltpetre, then simmer for half an hour.

  2. Remove them, wipe dry, and hang in a current of air for a week, turning daily.

  3. Smoke the polonies with oak lops.

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. Garlic + shallottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,000 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Beef + garlictop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean belfast smoked ham
Provides the main savoury meaty flavour and firm body of the filling.
Fat belfast smoked ham
Adds richness and smoky flavour that carries through the sausage.
Hung beef
Contributes deep, concentrated meaty flavour and a firm bite.
Smoked ox tongues
Adds a soft, rich texture and savoury depth to the paste.
Hard back fat of bacon
Keeps the mixture moist and tender as the polonies dry and cook.
Minced garlic
Adds sharp aromatic flavour that mellows during the week of resting.

The step that matters

Filling the intestines without trapped air. Air pockets let the mixture spoil and dry unevenly, so steady, even pressure and minimal pricking keep the polonies firm and safe to hang.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, beef, shallot, pepper, sugar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, beef, shallot, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes