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Epping Sausages

A pork and beef sausage made with suet, nutmeg, sage, salt, and pepper, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Epping Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sausage meat

  1. Mince the pork and beef suet very finely.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and chopped sage. Mix well and form into cakes.

Cook

  1. Fry the cakes in plenty of fat until golden brown.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the lean meat that forms the body and bite of the sausage cakes.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich during frying.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic herbal flavour to the meat.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the pork.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in plenty of fat until golden brown. Frying in ample hot fat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, building flavour and a crisp crust, while helping the cakes cook through without drying out.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, beef, pepper, sage. 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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