Name: Sausage Meat
Ingredients: 2 fresh hams; 1 shoulder of pork; coarse sea salt; black pepper; sage; 1 teaspoon sugar; cloves (optional); mace (optional); nutmeg (optional)

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the skin from the hams and shoulder, then chop the meat finely.
Season the chopped meat with salt, pepper, sage, and sugar.
If desired, add cloves, mace, and nutmeg for spiced flavor.

Store and shape

Store the mixture in a dry, cool place.
Form the mixture into balls or stuff into casings for dried sausages.

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.

Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together642 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together731 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh hams: Provide the lean meat that forms the bulk of the sausage mixture.
Shoulder of pork: Adds fat alongside the lean meat, contributing moisture and richness to the mixture.
Sage: Contributes the characteristic herby aroma of sausage.
Sugar: Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the salt and seasoning.

Swap the clove

The recipe marks clove as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pork, pepper, sage, sugar, mace, nutmeg):

Marjoramfits about as well
Clovethe original
Allspicefits about as well
Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pork, pepper, sage, sugar, mace, nutmeg. 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.