How to scale and convert sausage recipes
Why percentages
Butchers have always written recipes this way. The meat block, lean plus fat, is 100%, and everything else is a share of it. A recipe that says 1.8% salt, 0.24% Cure #1 and 8% water works for 2 kg or 20 kg without any rounding, and you can compare two recipes at a glance.
That's what Linkulator does. You enter the meat, it multiplies each percentage by the weight, and it adjusts the plain salt for the salt in your cure and rub.
Converting a spoon-and-cup recipe
A typical recipe for 5 lb of meat reads: 3 tablespoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of black pepper, 2 teaspoons of garlic powder. To turn it into percentages, convert each spoon to grams, then divide by the meat weight (5 lb is 2,268 g).
| Ingredient | Spoons | Grams, roughly | Percent of meat |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fine table salt | 3 Tbsp | 54 g | 2.4% |
| Flaky salt | 3 Tbsp | 27 g | 1.2% |
| Black pepper, ground | 1 Tbsp | 7 g | 0.3% |
| Garlic powder | 2 tsp | 6 g | 0.26% |
Look at the two salt lines. The same "3 tablespoons" is 2.4% with fine salt and 1.2% with flaky salt: one is salty, the other is bland and may not bind. Spoon weights also vary by brand and how you fill the spoon, so treat these figures as a starting point and weigh your own.
Converting between kg and lb
1 kg is 2.2046 lb, and 1 lb is 453.6 g. For sausage that's close enough as 1 kg = 2.2 lb. Ounces are where people slip: 1 oz is 28.35 g, and there are 16 oz in a pound, so 1.3 oz is 37 g. Linkulator shows grams, or pounds and ounces, so you don't need to convert by hand.
Small amounts don't scale down well
Scaling up is easy. Scaling a 10 kg recipe down to 500 g gives you 1.2 g of cure and pinches of spice that a kitchen scale can't weigh. For small batches, use a 0.01 g scale for cure and spices, or make a bigger batch and freeze some.
Don't scale the cure past the limit
Cure is a percentage too, but it has a legal ceiling. If an old recipe gives more cure per kilo than your country allows, don't scale it as written. Enter the meat in Linkulator and let it set the cure for your rules.
FAQ
How do I convert a sausage recipe to grams?
Weigh or look up each spoon measure in grams, then divide by the meat weight to get percentages. Percentages scale to any batch size.
How many grams in a tablespoon of salt?
About 18 g of fine table salt, but flaky salts can be half that. Weigh it.
What is the meat block in a sausage recipe?
The weight of the lean meat plus the fat. Salt, cure, spices and water are worked out as a percentage of it.
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Updated: 2026-10-21