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An Excellent Sausage to Eat Cold

A cured pork sausage that can be eaten cold or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 small and mix in the finely shredded shallot or garlic.

Stuff and dry

  1. Prepare the ox-gut and fill it with the stuffing, tying the ends securely.

  2. Hang the sausage to smoke, wrapping it in old muslin first.

  3. Dry the sausage thoroughly; it can be eaten without boiling or 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

Lean pork
Forms the main body of the sausage, giving it its meaty texture.
Fat pork
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the cured meat from drying out too much.
Saltpetre
Cures the meat, helping preserve it and giving it a pink colour.
Shallot or garlic
Adds aromatic flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Drying the sausage thoroughly. Drying removes surface and internal moisture that would otherwise allow spoilage. Thorough drying helps the sausage keep without refrigeration, so skipping or rushing this step risks spoiling it.

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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