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Beef Sausages

A homemade beef sausage made with lean beef, suet, herbs, and spices, cooked in casings and served with stewed red cabbage.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the lean beef and suet very fine.

  2. In a bowl, mix the chopped meat with thyme, sage, allspice, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and cook

  1. Fill the cleaned sausage casings with the mixture.

  2. Fry or broil the sausages until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with stewed red cabbage.

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. Thyme + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

  3. Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef
Provides the main meaty body and structure of the sausage.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it cooks.
Sage
Contributes a savoury, herbal aroma typical of sausage.
Thyme
Adds a warm, herbal flavour that complements the meat.

The step that matters

Chopping the beef and suet very fine. Finely chopped meat and fat bind into an even, cohesive mixture, so the sausage holds together when filled and cooked. Coarse pieces can crumble, and uneven fat distribution can leave dry patches.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, thyme, sage, pepper):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, thyme, sage, 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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