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Venison Sausage

A sausage made from finely chopped salt pork and raw venison seasoned with sage, sea salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Venison Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the old salt pork and raw venison finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped meat with sage, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into flat cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes without adding any additional fat, as the fat from the meat is sufficient.

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

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

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

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

  3. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Pork + venisontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Venison + peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together955 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Raw venison
Forms the lean meat base that gives the sausage its body and savory, meaty flavor.
Old salt pork
Supplies fat that keeps the lean venison moist and adds richness when the cakes fry.
Sage
Adds a warm, herbal aroma that defines the sausage's flavor.

The step that matters

Frying without added fat. Venison is very lean, so it can dry out and stick or toughen in the pan. The rendered fat from the salt pork keeps the cakes moist and helps them brown, so extra fat is not needed.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Rosemaryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, venison, 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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