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Pork Sausages, for Eating Cold

Cold pork sausages made by curing, seasoning, smoking, boiling, and slicing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Pork Sausages, for Eating Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the meat

  1. Combine pork and beef in a pickle for 10 days.

  2. Remove the meat, wash, drain, and dry it.

Make and smoke the sausages

  1. Mince the meat finely and season with black pepper, coarse sea salt, and allspice.

  2. Mix thoroughly and stuff into sausage casings, tying the ends securely.

  3. Wrap the sausages in muslin and hang them in smoke until they turn red.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the sausages in water for 30 minutes, then let cool.

  2. Slice thinly and serve cold.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Pork + allspicetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,194 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Fat and lean pork provide juiciness and body to the sausage.
Beef
Lean beef adds meaty flavour and firm texture to the mince.
Coarse sea salt
Salt draws out proteins that bind the meat and seasons it throughout.

The step that matters

Drying the meat after the pickle. Meat left wet after curing holds surface moisture that can dilute the seasoning and slow smoke adhesion. Drying it thoroughly helps the sausages take on colour and flavour evenly.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, pepper. 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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