Skip to main content
Main

Liver Wurst

A sausage made from hog's haslets, fat pork, onions, sage, salt, pepper, and meal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Liver Wurst

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meats

  1. Remove all imperfect parts from the hogs' haslets.

  2. Place the haslets in a pot of water and boil until tender.

  3. Chop the haslets, liverlights, and heart very fine on a tray.

  4. Boil the fat pork until tender. Remove the skin from the pork and chop it finely.

  5. Mix the chopped pork with the chopped liver mixture.

  6. Discard the water used to boil the haslets.

  7. Add the meat mixture to the water from the pork.

Season and thicken

  1. Chop the onions and add them to the pot.

  2. Season with sage, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Stir in the meal until the mixture is thick enough to fry.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Hogs' haslets
Provide the main liver-rich body and flavor of the sausage.
Fat pork
Adds fat, which gives the sausage moisture and a smooth, rich texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook down into the mixture.
Meal
Thickens the mixture so it holds its shape when cooled and fried.

The step that matters

Stir in the meal until the mixture is thick enough to fry. Meal absorbs liquid and swells as it cooks, so adding too little leaves the mixture loose and unable to hold shape when fried, while too much makes it stiff and dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, 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.

You might also like

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