Name: Mixing Sausage Seasonings
Ingredients: 3 pounds fine salt; 7 ounces ground white pepper; 2 ounces sugar; ½ ounce red pepper; ½ ounce ground mace; ½ ounce ground cloves; 3 ounces finely powdered sage; ¾ ounce finely powdered thyme

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 ↓

Mixing Sausage Seasonings

Ingredients

Directions

Mix all ingredients thoroughly until evenly incorporated.
Use this seasoning for 150 pounds of pork for a fancy breakfast sausage.

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).
Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together4,108 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together731 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine salt: Seasons the meat and helps draw out protein so the sausage binds and holds moisture.
Sage: Adds the characteristic aromatic, savory flavour of breakfast sausage.
Sugar: Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the salt and spices and aids browning.
White pepper: Provides a mild, sharp heat and aroma without visible black specks.

Swap the white pepper

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

Marjoramfits better
Allspicefits better
Winter savoryfits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, pepper, mace, clove, sage, thyme. 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.