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Mecklenburg Liver Sausages

A sausage made from minced pig liver, pork, tongue, kidney, and fat, seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves or allspice, sage, and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mecklenburg Liver Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the liver from a fresh pig and mince it.

  2. Pass the minced liver through a coarse sieve and weigh it.

  3. Chop the tongue, kidneys, and inside fat without mincing.

  4. Mix the chopped meat with the minced liver.

Season and fill

  1. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, cloves or allspice, and powdered sage.

  2. Use the top fat and liquor from boiling the meat in the mixture.

  3. Fill the sausage skins with the meat mixture, leaving them three-quarters full.

Cook and finish

  1. Boil the sausages in hot liquor for half an hour.

  2. After cooking, plunge the sausages into cold water and hang them to dry.

  3. Optionally smoke the sausages.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pig liver
Forms the smooth, rich base that gives the sausage its body and flavour.
Boiled pork
Adds firm meaty pieces that give the filling texture and bite.
Pig tongue
Contributes richness and a tender, gelatinous texture when cooked.
Pig kidney
Adds depth and a soft, tender texture to the filling.
Inside fat
Supplies fat that keeps the filling moist and tender through cooking.

The step that matters

Fill the skins three-quarters full. Meat expands and the casing can split if overfilled during cooking. Leaving room lets the sausages swell safely in the hot liquor without bursting.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, pork, pepper, sage, meat):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, pork, pepper, sage, meat. 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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