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American Sausage

A pork and ham sausage with onions, peppers, parsley, spices, eggs, milk, wrapped in cheesecloth and bacon, boiled for 3 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and basil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,351 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

American Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat and vegetables

  1. Pass the pork and ham through a meat chopper.

  2. Chop the onion, green pepper, red pepper, and parsley finely.

Mix and wrap

  1. In a bowl, combine the meat, vegetables, basil, curry powder, paprika, salt, eggs, and milk.

  2. Mix all ingredients thoroughly, adding more onion or seasonings if desired.

  3. Spread cheesecloth on a board and lay strips of bacon side by side.

  4. Place the sausage mixture on the bacon, spreading the ends with more bacon.

  5. Roll the sausage in the cheesecloth and tie the ends securely.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook in boiling salted water with vinegar for 3 hours.

  2. Let cool under a weight and serve cold, sliced thin.

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. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,294 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 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

Fresh pork
Provides the main meat and fat that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Ham
Adds savoury, cured meat flavour to the mixture.
Eggs
Bind the meat and vegetables together so the sausage holds its shape when sliced.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mixture, keeping the sausage tender.

The step that matters

Rolling and tying the sausage. If the cheesecloth is not rolled tightly and tied securely, the mixture can loosen and spread during the long simmer, leaving a loose, unevenly shaped sausage that is hard to slice neatly.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, ham, onion, pepper, parsley, egg, milk):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, ham, onion, pepper, parsley, egg, milk. 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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