Name: Oyster Sausage
Ingredients: 1 pint oysters; ¼ pound veal; ¼ pound suet; bread crumbs; salt; pepper; 1 egg

Why it works: Oyster and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,545 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oyster Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the oysters, veal, and suet together.
Mix with bread crumbs and pound in a mortar.
Season with salt and pepper, then add the beaten egg.
Form the mixture into cakes like pork 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.

Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,545 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + breadtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,056 recipes

Shared aroma: cis-3-hexenol (green, grassy).