Name: Virginia Sausage Meat
Ingredients: sausage meat; lukewarm water; backbone fat; leaf fat; salt; sage; black pepper; red pepper

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Virginia Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Pick the sausage meat to remove bones and strings.
Wash the meat in lukewarm water and drain it on a table overnight.
Remove some fat from the backbone to mix with the lean meat.
Chop the meat finely, picking out all strings.
Season the chopped meat with salt, sage, black pepper, and red pepper to taste.
Pack the mixture into a close vessel.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + sagetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).