Skip to main content
Main

Italian Pork Sausages

A sausage made from pork, veal, sardines, and spices, stuffed in beef casings and boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Capers and pistachio share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Italian Pork Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Combine raw pork, boiled salt pork, and raw veal in a large bowl.

  2. Chop sardines finely and mix with the pork and veal.

  3. Add raw fat pork cubes and mix thoroughly.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine salt, ground pepper, capers, and pistachio nuts. Mix the seasoning into the meat mixture.

  5. Add pickled tongues and mix well.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the mixture into beef casings.

  2. Wrap sausages in cloth and tie with twine.

  3. Boil sausages for about 1 hour.

  4. Remove sausages and let cool for 24 hours.

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. Capers + pistachiotop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pistachio + nutstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  4. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw pork
Provides the main lean meat body and savory flavor of the sausage.
Raw fat pork
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender during cooking.
Raw veal
Contributes mild, tender meat that softens the texture of the filling.
Sardines
Add a concentrated savory, briny flavor that deepens the meat taste.
Pistachio nuts
Add crunch and a mild nutty flavor throughout the filling.
Capers
Add acidity and a sharp brininess that cuts through the rich meat.

The step that matters

Boil sausages for about 1 hour. Boiling must be gentle and the sausages must cook through, because the raw pork and fat need full heat to be safe and to set the filling firmly. Sharp boiling can split the casings and leave the filling loose.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Lentilsfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, pepper, capers, pistachio, wine, beef. 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

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipes