Skip to main content
Main

Italian Sausage

A pork sausage with blood, wine, spices, and calf head strips, boiled and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Coriander and anise share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 86 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Italian Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. In a bowl, combine the minced lean pork and fat pork.

  2. Season the mixture with coarse sea salt, mixed spice, coriander seed, and bruised anise seed.

  3. Moisten the mixture with pig's blood and white wine until it binds together, but do not make it too moist.

  4. Mix in the narrow strips from the calf's head.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the mixture into sausage skins and tie the ends securely.

  2. Plunge the sausages into boiling water and boil gently for about 30 minutes until cooked.

Dry

  1. Dry the sausages in a smokehouse or over a wood fire until hard.

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. Coriander + anisetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together86 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pork + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,544 recipes

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

  3. Coriander + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pork + anisetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Pork + coriandertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together909 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the lean meat that forms the main body and bite of the sausage.
Fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it cooks and dries.
Pig's blood
Helps bind the mixture together and adds moisture to the filling.
White wine
Adds moisture to the filling and contributes a light acidity.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and draws out moisture that helps bind the filling.

The step that matters

Moistening the mixture. Adding too much pig's blood and wine makes the filling wet and loose, so it may not bind well or dry firmly. Add liquid gradually until the mixture holds together without becoming soggy.

Swap the anise

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, coriander, white wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Anisethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, coriander, white wine. 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

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes