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Sausage Bolls

Sausage Balls are pastry-wrapped meat mixtures of pork, veal, suet, and breadcrumbs, seasoned with sage, pepper, salt, and marjoram.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sausage Bolls

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Chop pork, veal, and suet finely; mix with bread crumbs and seasonings.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out puff pastry thinly and cut into 3½ by 3½ inch pieces.

  2. Place a roll of sausage meat in the center of each pastry piece, dampen the edges, and fold the pastry over to seal.

  3. Brush tops with egg yolk and decorate with pastry leaves or cut slits in the top.

  4. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the main meat flavor and fat that keeps the filling moist and juicy.
Veal
Adds a mild, tender meat base that balances the richer pork.
Suet
Adds hard fat that melts during baking, keeping the filling moist and tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and fat, giving the filling a softer, more cohesive texture.
Puff pastry
Its layered fat puffs with steam in the oven, creating a flaky, crisp wrapper.
Egg yolk
Brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy golden finish.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry edges. Dampened edges must be pressed firmly closed so the filling stays inside. Gaps let juices leak and can stop the pastry from puffing evenly in the oven.

“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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