Food

Cervelat (Swiss Cervelas)

Beef · Pork · Sausage · Smoked Foods · Swiss

Cervelat (Swiss Cervelas)
Prep 1 hour 30 minutes, plus cooking the rinds
Cook About 2 hours (drying, smoking, scalding)
Serves About 7.5 lb / 3.4 kg — 30 to 34 cervelats of about 100 g
Level Hard

Cervelat — cervelas in French-speaking Switzerland — is the Swiss national sausage: a short, plump, smoked, pink emulsion sausage of beef, pork, bacon fat and pork rind, about 100 g, eaten at every barbecue, school trip and First of August celebration. The Swiss eat about 160 million a year, roughly twenty each. The classic way is to cut a cross into both ends and grill it over a campfire on a stick until the ends curl open. The diagnostic is that it is a scalded sausage (Brühwurst), like a big frankfurter, and not the German Zervelatwurst, which is a raw, fermented, dried slicing sausage. The two share a name and nothing else. The other diagnostic is the casing: a particular stretch of beef small intestine, firm enough to peel raw and tender enough to eat cooked, which shrinks on the grill to give the sausage its shape. That casing caused a national crisis: from April 2006 the EU banned Brazilian beef casings on BSE grounds, Switzerland followed under its bilateral agreements, and a 2008 industry “task force” could find no equal substitute. I have not made this one yet; the formula is built from published Swiss compositions and standard Brühwurst practice, and is untested.

Ingredients

MEAT BLOCK (2,270 g / 5 lb), % of meat weight

  • 863 g (1 lb 14 oz) lean beef (chuck or shank, sinew removed) — 38%
  • 318 g (11.2 oz) lean pork shoulder — 14%
  • 636 g (1 lb 6 oz) pork back fat or fatty bacon (unsmoked) — 28%
  • 454 g (1 lb) pork rind, weighed raw, then cooked soft (see directions) — 20%

ICE (% of meat weight)

  • 726 g crushed ice or ice water (32%)

CURE AND SEASONING (% of meat weight)

  • 5.7 g Cure #1 (pink salt, 6.25% sodium nitrite) — 2.5 g/kg x 2.27 kg = 5.7 g; 2.5 g/kg x 6.25% = 156 ppm ingoing nitrite, the USDA ceiling for comminuted products
  • 41 g fine salt (in addition to the cure) (1.8%)
  • 6.8 g sodium phosphate, optional cutter aid (US limit 0.5% of the finished product) (0.3%)
  • 5.7 g white pepper (0.25%)
  • 2.3 g ground coriander (0.1%)
  • 1.1 g nutmeg (0.05%)
  • 1.1 g mace (0.05%)
  • 0.5 g ground clove (0.02%)
  • 2.3 g onion powder (0.1%)
  • 2.3 g garlic powder (0.1%)
  • 38–43 mm beef rounds (beef small intestine), about 15 ft (4.5 m); butcher’s twine

Directions

Key ingredients

Black Pepper

  1. In the collection: ice, rind and beef rounds. The technique is the same as the collection’s Knackwurst and Bockwurst; the Swiss dry-sausage relative is Landjäger (Swiss Gendarme, Beef and Red Wine).
  2. Cook the rinds: simmer the pork rind in unsalted water for 1½–2 hours until a finger presses through it. Drain, chop and grind warm through a 3 mm plate, then chill. Cooked rind is gelatine; it binds water and gives cervelat its slightly firm, juicy bite. Raw rind stays as rubbery specks.
  3. Grind cold: chill beef, pork and fat to −2 to 0 °C. Grind the beef and pork through 3 mm; grind the fat through 3 mm separately and keep it in the freezer.
  4. Emulsify — keep it below 12 °C: in a food processor, process the lean with the salt, cure and phosphate and a third of the ice until it is a sticky, shiny paste. Add the spices and the next third of the ice. Then add the fat, the rind and the last of the ice and process until smooth and fine. Check the temperature constantly: above about 12 °C / 54 °F the emulsion breaks and fat runs out in the scald. Work in batches if the bowl is small.
  5. Test: poach a spoonful at 75 °C for 10 minutes. It should be pink (from the cure), firm, springy and juicy with no fat ring. Adjust the salt now.
  6. Stuff: fill the beef rounds firmly and tie or twist into 12 cm (4½ in) links of about 100 g, or tie into pairs. Beef rounds are tougher than hog casing, which is the point — they hold the shape on the grill.
  7. Dry and smoke: hang at room temperature until the casings are dry to the touch, then dry in the smoker at 50 °C / 122 °F for 30 minutes, and smoke with beech at 60–65 °C / 140–150 °F for 45–60 minutes until reddish-brown.
  8. Scald: poach in water held at 75 °C / 167 °F, about 25–30 minutes, until the centre reaches 71 °C / 160 °F. Never boil.
  9. Shock: plunge into ice water, then dry and refrigerate. They keep a week, or freeze.
  10. Grill the Swiss way: cut a cross about 2 cm deep into each end and grill over embers on a stick or a rack until the ends curl open and char. Or slice cold into Wurstsalat with onion, vinegar and cheese.

Notes

Where this recipe came from — and what it isn’t. There is no protected Swiss formula. Published compositions vary: one Swiss breakdown is 27% beef, 10% pork, 20% bacon, 15% rind and 23% ice; Swissinfo says “pork around 50%” with beef, bacon and rind; German Wikipedia describes roughly equal parts beef, pork, back fat or rind, and ice, with nitrite salt and cutter aids. This recipe takes the first breakdown, re-based on the meat block (beef 38%, pork 14%, fat 28%, rind 20%, ice 32% of meat). Processing follows German Wikipedia’s account: smoked about an hour at 65–70 °C, then scalded at 75 °C. Deviations: (1) Swiss nitrite curing salt is replaced by Cure #1 at 156 ppm on the meat block — the cure is calculated on the meat, not the ice; (2) the final temperature is 71 °C, the US figure for pork; (3) phosphate is optional. Untested.

Cervelat is not Zervelatwurst. The German Zervelatwurst (and the Hungarian-style cervelat salami) is a Rohwurst — raw, fermented and dried, sliced cold. The Swiss Cervelat is a Brühwurst — emulsified, smoked hot and scalded, eaten hot. German Wikipedia’s entry is explicit that the Swiss sausage is not to be confused with the German one.

The casing crisis. A cervelat needs a specific segment of beef small intestine, and Switzerland does not produce enough; most came from Brazilian zebu cattle, whose casings peel and shrink in exactly the right way. The EU banned Brazilian beef casings from 1 April 2006 on BSE grounds, and Switzerland applies EU veterinary rules under its bilateral agreements. By late 2007 casing prices had risen about 30%. On 15 January 2008 the industry announced that its “cervelat task force” had tested artificial collagen, Uruguayan beef casings and pig casings and found nothing as good; the industry spokesman Balz Horber said there was “no danger that the cervelat will cease to exist, but we have a serious problem to solve.” By August 2008 most demand was being met from Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay. German Wikipedia gives the ban as lasting until autumn 2012.

Where cervelat came from. The name comes through French cervelas from Italian cervellata and Latin cerebellum, brain; early versions contained pig’s brain, and none have since the BSE crisis. A cervellata recipe is credited to the fifteenth-century Milanese cook Maestro Martino; the word appears in Rabelais in 1552; a Bernese cookbook of 1749 is cited as the oldest Swiss recipe; and the modern cervelat took shape in Swiss butchers’ shops in the nineteenth century, becoming universal with mechanical choppers in the early twentieth. It is listed in the Swiss culinary heritage inventory; no canton claims it.

Variations. Cheese-filled and bacon-wrapped grill versions; cervelat salad (Wurstsalat).

Sourcing and gear. Beef rounds are sold by US sausage suppliers in 38–46 mm. A food processor works for small batches if you work in stages and watch the temperature; a bowl chopper is better.

Still open. No Swiss butcher’s working formula with spice weights is published; the casing ban’s end date rests on one source.

Read more on the site. The Family Tree · Germany