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Country Pork Sausages

A sausage made from finely chopped pork and fat, seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, and savory, then stuffed into intestines or bags.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Country Pork Sausages

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Finely chop the lean pork and fat pork.

  2. Mix in the salt, black pepper, sage, and summer savory with your hands.

  3. Taste the mixture to ensure it has the right flavor.

Pack and store

  1. Stuff the mixture into cleaned hog intestines or make bags from stout muslin.

  2. Fill the bags with enough sausage for a family dish.

  3. Dip the sausages in melted lard.

  4. Hang the sausages in a cool, dry, dark place.

  5. Alternatively, pack the meat in jars.

  6. Pour melted lard over the packed meat.

  7. Cover the jars.

Cook and serve

  1. When ready to use, form the meat into small round cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes until brown.

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. Sage + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together237 recipes

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

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Summer savory + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together51 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  5. Summer savory + clovetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean fresh pork
Provides the lean meat that forms the body of the sausage.
Chine fat
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender as it cooks.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out moisture and firm up its texture.
Sage
Contributes the characteristic savory, aromatic flavour of country sausage.
Black pepper
Adds a sharp, pungent warmth that balances the rich pork and fat.

The step that matters

Taste the mixture before packing. Salt and herbs are mixed in by hand and unevenly seasoned meat cannot be corrected once stuffed or jarred. Tasting lets the cook adjust the seasoning while the mixture is still loose and easy to change.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, sage, summer savory, mace, nutmeg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage, summer savory, mace, nutmeg. 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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