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Polony Sausage

A fresh pork sausage seasoned with salt, allspice, black pepper, saltpetre, and shallot, then stuffed into a gut and hung to dry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Polony Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the meat

  1. Rub the meat daily for six days with the salt, allspice, black pepper, and saltpetre, all mixed together.

Prepare and stuff

  1. Mince the meat finely and add the shredded shallot, mixing well.

  2. Stuff the mixture into a well-soaked, salted, and scoured ox-gut.

  3. Tie the sausage into links about 9 inches long.

Dry

  1. Tie the ends of the sausage and hang it up to dry like a ham.

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pepper + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pork + shallottop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the meat and fat that form the body and juiciness of the sausage.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat during the daily curing rubs.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured sausage its characteristic colour.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic flavour to the cured meat.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that seasons the sausage.

The step that matters

Daily curing rub. The meat must be rubbed every day for six days so the salt and saltpetre penetrate evenly. Skipping days leaves uneven curing and seasoning throughout the sausage.

Swap the shallot

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, allspice, 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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