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Spiced Sausages

A pork sausage flavored with saltpetre, allspice, black pepper, and shallots, smoked and dried.

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 ↓

Spiced Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Cure the pork

  1. Rub the pork with saltpetre, allspice, and black pepper, and let it sit for several days, rubbing it daily.

Fill the sausages

  1. Chop the pork into small pieces and mix in the finely chopped shallots.

  2. Clean the ox gut thoroughly and fill it tightly with the meat mixture.

  3. Tie both ends of the filled gut securely.

  4. Tie the sausages into desired lengths before smoking.

Smoke and dry

  1. Smoke the sausages like hams, then wrap them in a thin cloth and let them dry well.

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

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

  3. Pork + allspicetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,194 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Forms the main body of the sausage, providing the meat texture and richness.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping preserve it and giving it a firm texture and colour.
Shalots
Add a mild onion-like aroma and savoury flavour to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Fill the gut tightly. Loose filling leaves air pockets that can spoil the sausage during drying and smoking. Tight packing also helps the casing hold its shape as it dries.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, 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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