Name: Fresh Sausage
Ingredients: 150 pounds fresh pork trimmings; 3 ½ pounds fine salt; 7 ounces white pepper; 1 ounce ground ginger; 3 ounces rubbed sage; ½ ounce thyme; 4 ½ pounds white sugar; ½ ounce fine red pepper; sheep casings

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 ↓

Fresh Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Trim and select pork to have 60% lean and 40% fat.
Chop the meat finely.
Mix the spices with the chopped meat thoroughly.
Do not add water.
Stuff the mixture into sheep casings and link them into 3-inch sections.
Store the sausages in a cooler until ready to ship or sell.

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.

Sage + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,485 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).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ginger + sagetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together157 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Ginger + thymetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together421 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, ginger, sage, thyme, sugar, pepper):

Marjoramfits better
Allspicefits better
Rosemaryfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, ginger, sage, thyme, sugar, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.