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Summer Sausage

A cured sausage made from lean beef, lean pork, fat pork, saltpeter, salt, pepper, mustard seed, cardamom, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Summer Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the beef finely, then add the pork and chop again.

  2. Mix in the fat pork squares and all seasonings.

Cure and stuff

  1. Allow the mixture to stand in a cold place for 2 to 4 days, turning it occasionally.

  2. Soak the casings in water for 24 hours before using to soften them and remove excess salt.

  3. Stuff the mixture tightly into hog casings.

Dry, smoke and store

  1. Hang the sausages by the large end to dry for several days.

  2. Smoke the sausages in a cool smoke for 3 to 5 days.

  3. Store the sausage in a cool, dry place.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Mustard + cardamomtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 recipes

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

  4. Beef + mustardtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,664 recipes

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

  5. Beef + cardamomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meat structure and firm, sliceable texture.
Lean pork
Adds meat bulk and body along with the beef.
Fat pork
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the sausage juicy as it dries.
Saltpeter
Helps the meat keep its pink colour and inhibits spoilage during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and draws out moisture, helping preserve it during curing.

The step that matters

Stuffing the mixture tightly into casings. Loose stuffing leaves air pockets that can spoil or dry unevenly, and air trapped inside encourages mould during drying. Firm packing removes air so the sausage cures and dries uniformly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Turmericfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, mustard, cardamom. 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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