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To Make Sausage Meat

A mixture of finely chopped raw pork and veal seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, and flour, formed into balls and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Finely chop the raw pork and veal.

  2. Season the meat with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and sage.

  3. Add a little flour to the mixture.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into small balls.

  2. Fry the balls in a pan until cooked through.

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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw pork
Provides fat and richness, keeping the sausage meat moist and tender as it cooks.
Raw veal
Adds a mild, delicate meat flavour and a fine, tender texture.
Flour
Binds the meat mixture so the balls hold their shape during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the balls until cooked through. Raw pork and veal must reach a safe internal temperature throughout. Forming small balls helps the heat reach the centre, but the centre should be checked to make sure it is fully cooked.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, pepper, flour. 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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