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Stewed Sausage Meat, with Chestnuts

Stewed sausage meat with chestnuts in a brown gravy seasoned with herbs and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Chestnut and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 517 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Stewed Sausage Meat, with Chestnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chestnuts

  1. Roast the chestnuts over a slow fire until the husk can be removed.

  2. Peel them, removing the inner skin, and keep warm near the fire.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sausage slices in butter until browned.

  2. Remove them and pour 3 tablespoons of the frying butter into a saucepan.

  3. Thicken the butter with flour while heating, then gradually add the gravy and sherry or Madeira.

  4. Add the faggot of herbs and season with cayenne and black pepper.

  5. Bring to a boil.

Stew and serve

  1. Place the sausage slices around the saucepan, leaving the center clear for the chestnuts.

  2. Let stew slowly for 45 minutes.

  3. Serve by arranging the sausage and chestnuts on a plate, pouring the gravy over them, and removing the faggot of herbs.

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. Chestnut + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together517 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Chestnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Chestnut + sherrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together87 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sausage meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and, once browned, a rich surface taste for the gravy.
Chestnuts
Add a soft, starchy body and a mildly sweet, nutty flavour to the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and gravy into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Fresh butter
Carries the frying flavour into the sauce and adds richness.
Sherry or madeira
Adds acidity and a deep, aromatic sweetness to the gravy.

The step that matters

Thicken the butter with flour while heating. Flour must be cooked into the hot fat before the liquid goes in; otherwise it stays raw-tasting and forms lumps instead of a smooth, glossy sauce.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, butter, flour, sherry, pepper):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits about as well
  3. Chestnutthe original
  4. Beansfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, flour, sherry, pepper. 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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