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An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

A cured pork and veal sausage seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, sage, and garlic, smoked and hung to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

Why it works: Allspice and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 331 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Season the pork and veal with salt, saltpetre, black pepper, and allspice.

  2. Rub the mixture into the meat.

  3. On the sixth day, cut the meat small and mix in the finely chopped shallot or garlic.

Prepare the casing

  1. Prepare an ox-gut by scouring, salting, and soaking it well.

  2. Wrap the gut in old muslin.

Fill and hang

  1. Fill the gut with the meat mixture.

  2. Tie the ends.

  3. Hang it to smoke like hams.

  4. Ensure it is high-dried.

Finish

  1. Some prefer it boiled before eating, while others eat it cold.

  2. Tie the skin in sections to create links about 8 to 9 inches long.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Allspice + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the main lean meat that forms the body of the sausage.
Veal
Adds mild, tender lean meat that softens the overall texture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and juicy as it dries.
Penny loaf crumbs
Absorbs juices and fat, helping the filling hold together.
Shallot or garlic
Adds savoury aroma to the meat mixture.
Dried sage
Adds herbal aroma to the filling.

The step that matters

Ensure it is high-dried. Drying the casing thoroughly before smoking lets the surface firm up and the sausage cure evenly. Damp casing can cure unevenly and spoil more readily.

Swap the shallot

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

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

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