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Blood Sausage

A sausage made from pork, pig skins, hog blood, and spices, cooked and smoked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Blood Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil and chop the pork finely.

  2. Mix the chopped pork with the hog blood.

  3. Season with ground white pepper, cloves, allspice, and marjoram.

Fill and cook

  1. Fill beef middles loosely with the mixture.

  2. Scald in water below boiling point for 1 hour, pricking occasionally with thin wire.

  3. Check for doneness by pressing; if no blood is observed, the sausage is done.

Dry and smoke

  1. Dry the sausage for 24 hours in smoke, then place in cold smoke.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together342 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. White pepper + allspicetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together272 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. White pepper + marjoramtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together134 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

Fresh cheek
Supplies the fat and meat that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Pig skins
Adds gelatin, which helps bind the filling and gives a firm texture when cooled.
Fresh strained hog blood
Thickens as it cooks and sets the filling, giving the sausage its dark colour and structure.
Cloves
Contributes warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the sausage.
Allspice
Adds aromatic warmth that balances the richness of the blood and pork.

The step that matters

Scalding below boiling point. Water at a full boil would burst the casings and can toughen the filling. Holding the water just under boiling cooks the sausage gently and evenly, while pricking lets steam escape so the casings do not split.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, allspice, marjoram. 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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