Skip to main content
Main

Polish Sausage

A smoked sausage made from beef and pork trimmings preserved with saltpeter, salt, pepper, garlic, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Polish Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Preserve 25 pounds of pork trimmings with 4 ounces of saltpeter and 1 pound of coarse sea salt for 5 days.

  2. Chop the beef and preserved pork trimmings to about half-pea size.

  3. Add 25 pounds of water, 6 ounces of black pepper, and the garlic while chopping.

Fill and smoke

  1. Fill the mixture into hog casings.

  2. Form the filled casings into links 8 to 10 inches long.

  3. Smoke the links over moderate heat for 2 hours.

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. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pork + garlictop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,169 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-ethyl-2,5-dimethylpyrazine (roasted, nutty).

  5. Beef + garlictop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef trimmings
Supplies lean meat and fat that give the sausage its body and meaty flavor.
Pork trimmings
Adds fat that keeps the sausage juicy and helps it hold together.
Saltpeter
Curing agent that helps keep the meat pink and slows spoilage bacteria.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and draws out proteins that bind the mixture together.
Black pepper
Adds sharp aroma and gentle heat to the seasoning.

The step that matters

Curing the pork for 5 days. Salt and saltpeter need the full curing time to work through the pork, slowing spoilage bacteria and setting the pink colour. Measuring the cure accurately matters because the nitrate must be used in controlled amounts.

Swap the garlic

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipes