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Frankfurter Sausage

A large-scale frankfurter sausage made from bull meat, ham shanks, pork shoulders, seasoned, stuffed, smoked, and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Frankfurter Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the meat

  1. Mix the bull meat with 1 lb. coarse sea salt and ½ lb. saltpetre; let stand in the refrigerator for 48 hours.

  2. Grind the bull meat, ham shanks, and pork shoulders together until fine.

Make the links

  1. Add the frankfurter seasoning, flour, and water to the meat mixture.

  2. Stuff the mixture into sheep casings and form into links, 9 links per pound.

  3. Hang the sausages to dry for 1 hour.

Smoke and cook

  1. Smoke the sausages using hickory wood and cedar sawdust until they are a reddish brown.

  2. Boil the sausages in water for 5 minutes, then cool them in cold water.

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. Meat + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

  2. Ham + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Meat + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  4. Pork + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Pork and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,187 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

Bull meat
Forms the main body of the sausage and, once cured, gives it a firm, sliceable texture.
Saltpetre
Helps the meat keep its pink-red colour and adds to the cured flavour during the 48-hour rest.
Pork shoulders
Adds fat that keeps the ground mixture juicy and tender after cooking.
Ham shanks
Adds cured meat flavour and fat to the blend, supporting a rich, savoury taste.
Flour
Binds the ground meat and absorbs liquid, helping the links hold their shape and texture.

The step that matters

Curing the bull meat for 48 hours. Salt and saltpetre must draw in and distribute evenly through the meat during the long rest. Uneven curing leaves some links with poor colour, weak flavour, and less reliable preservation.

“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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