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Common Sausage-meat

A mixture of lean and fat pork seasoned with sage, pepper, and salt, formed into cakes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Common Sausage-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove skin, sinews, and gristle from the pork.

  2. Mince the lean and fat pork as finely as possible.

  3. Rub the dried sage leaves to powder and mix with the minced meat.

  4. Add black pepper and coarse sea salt, then mix everything well with your hands.

Store

  1. Pack the mixture into a stone jar and cover it tightly.

  2. Store the jar in a cool, dry place.

Shape and fry

  1. When ready to use, shape the sausage meat into flat cakes about 1 inch thick.

  2. Dredge the cakes with flour.

  3. Fry the cakes in batter or dripping over low heat until browned on both sides and cooked through.

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. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean young fresh pork
Provides the main meat body and structure once minced and cooked.
Fat pork
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the cakes from drying out while frying.
Dried sage leaves
Contributes the aromatic herbal flavour that defines the sausage.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that seasons the meat throughout.
Flour
Dredging coat that helps the cakes brown evenly in the frying fat.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes over low heat. Low heat lets the centre cook through before the outside browns too fast. Fat rendering and surface browning need steady heat, so the cakes stay juicy rather than burnt outside and raw inside.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour. 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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