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To Make Sausages

A pork sausage made with lean pork, fat, spices, herbs, bread, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Make Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove bones and skin from the pork and fat, then shred them finely.

  2. Add nutmeg, cloves, mace, and pepper to the meat mixture.

  3. Beat the mixture until fine, then add coarse sea salt equal to the weight of the spices.

  4. Finely shred the sage and thyme, then mix them into the meat.

  5. Add the grated bread and egg yolks, and mix everything well.

Fill

  1. Fill the sausage skins with the prepared meat mixture.

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. Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Nutmeg + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the lean meat that forms the body and bite of the sausage.
Fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the sausage juicy when cooked.
White bread
Absorbs liquid and helps the mixture hold together with a softer texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and add richness to help it hold together.
Fresh sage
Contributes a warm, aromatic herbal flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until fine. Fine, evenly worked meat binds better and gives a smooth, uniform texture. Under-processing leaves a coarse, crumbly sausage, while the salt, which is added after beating, helps extract proteins that bind the meat together.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, nutmeg, clove, pepper, sage, thyme, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, nutmeg, clove, pepper, sage, thyme, bread. 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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