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An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

A cured pork sausage made by seasoning, stuffing into ox-gut, smoking, and drying.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

Prepare the meat

  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 finely chopped shallot or garlic.

Fill and dry

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

  2. Fill the gut with the meat mixture, tie the ends, and hang it to smoke wrapped in old muslin.

  3. Ensure it is high-dried before consuming; some prefer it 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

Fat pork
Supplies fat that keeps the sausage moist and gives a tender bite.
Lean pork
Provides the protein structure that holds the sausage together when sliced.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping it keep its pink colour and resist spoilage during drying.
Salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the meat, aiding preservation during curing.

The step that matters

Drying the finished sausage. Sausage must be dried thoroughly before eating. Insufficient drying leaves moisture that allows bacteria to grow, so the sausage can spoil or become unsafe. Drying time should be judged by firmness, not by appearance alone.

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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