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An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

A smoked pork sausage seasoned with salt, pepper, allspice, and shallot or garlic, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

Why it works: Pepper and allspice 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 ↓

An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Season and mix

  1. Season the pork with salt, saltpetre, black pepper, and allspice, rubbing the mixture into the meat.

  2. On the sixth day, cut the meat into small pieces and mix in the chopped shallot or garlic.

Stuff and smoke

  1. Prepare the ox-gut and fill it with the meat mixture, tying the ends securely.

  2. Hang the sausage to smoke, wrapping it in old muslin first.

  3. Dry the sausage thoroughly; it can be eaten without boiling or boiled first.

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. Pepper + allspicetop 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
Lean meat gives the sausage its structure, while fat adds moisture and richness.
Shallot or garlic
Adds a sharp, aromatic flavour that stands out in the cured meat.
Ox-gut
Acts as the casing that holds the filling in its shape during smoking and drying.

The step that matters

Fill the ox-gut and tie the ends securely. Packing the casing firmly leaves fewer air pockets, which helps the sausage keep an even texture and dry evenly. Loose or badly tied ends can let the filling spill out or spoil during hanging.

Swap the shallot

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

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

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