Name: Recipe for Good Lean Sausage
Ingredients: 200 pounds lean pork trimmings, dry cured; 100 pounds beef trimmings, dry cured; 200 pounds pork head or cheek meat, dry cured; 5 pounds water per 100 pounds of meat

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Recipe for Good Lean Sausage

Ingredients

200 pounds lean pork trimmings, dry cured
100 pounds beef trimmings, dry cured
200 pounds pork head or cheek meat, dry cured
5 pounds water per 100 pounds of meat

Directions

Grind the beef trimmings through a 7/64-inch plate.
Chop the ground beef fine in a meat cutter.
Add 5 pounds of water for every 100 pounds of meat to achieve the necessary consistency.

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.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,533 recipes

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