Name: Pork Sausage
Ingredients: 3½ pounds lean pork; 2½ pounds fat pork; 3 ounces coarse sea salt; 1 ounce summer savory, powdered; 1 ounce sage leaves, powdered; 1 ounce ground pepper; melted lard (for packing)

Why it works: Summer savory and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 237 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Pork Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the lean pork and fat pork together.
Pass the meat mixture through a coarse meat chopper.
Add the salt, summer savory, sage, and ground pepper, rubbing them in with your hands.
Grind the seasoned meat as fine as possible.
Pack the sausage into a jar and pour at least ½ inch of melted lard over it.

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.

Summer savory + sagetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together237 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together671 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + summer savorytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together239 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).