Why it works: Liver and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,606 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓
Curing Meats for Liver Sausage
Ingredients
Directions
Cure
Cure the meat and fat in a brine made of 1 lb Freeze-Em-Pickle, 7 lbs coarse sea salt, and 5 gallons of water for 1-2 weeks.
Cut the livers into strips after chilling them for 24 hours and cure them in the brine for 2 weeks.
Prepare the meat
Scald the livers by pouring boiling water over them or dipping them in boiling water until cooked through.
Cool the livers in ice water or a tub of cold water until they are completely cooled.
Cook the hog necks, heads, or bellies and remove all the meat from the bones.
Chop the meat as finely as possible.
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.
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Liver + porktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,606 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Hog livers
- Form the bulk of the liver sausage and give it its characteristic rich flavor and smooth texture.
- Pork necks
- Add meat and fat that keep the sausage moist and add body to the mixture.
- Freeze-em-pickle
- Cures the meat, preserving it and keeping its color stable during the long brine.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the meat and seasons it during the cure.
The step that matters
Cure the livers in the brine. The brine must be fully mixed and the livers kept submerged and cold for the whole cure. Curing salts and salt work through the meat slowly, and uneven or warm conditions let spoilage bacteria grow before the cure takes hold.
“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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