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Recipe for Mortadella Sausage

Contains saltpeter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Recipe for Mortadella Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Chop the beef finely through a 7/64 plate, then mix for 10-15 minutes, adding salt, saltpeter, and pepper.

  2. Add the lean pork and chop for another 30 minutes until very fine.

  3. Discontinue chopping and add the diced pork fat.

  4. Crush the nutmegs, cinnamon, cloves, and coriander seed, then simmer in ¾ gallon of Burgundy wine for 15 minutes.

  5. Strain the liquid and cool it, then add ⅛ of this liquid to every 100 pounds of sausage meat.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  5. Cinnamon + coriandertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,635 recipes

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

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, beef, meat, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, coriander):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, meat, nutmeg, cinnamon, clove, coriander. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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