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Fine Sausages

A finely minced pork sausage seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, sage, and rosemary, formed into balls or cakes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and rosemary match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 465 recipes. Both carry 1,8-cineol, which smells eucalyptus, camphor. The science ↓

Fine Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

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

  2. Mince the pork very fine and combine with fat.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, cloves, mace, nutmeg, sage, and rosemary.

  4. Mix all ingredients well and pack into a stone jar, pressing down hard.

Store

  1. Cover the jar and store in a dry, cool place.

Cook

  1. When ready to use, mix sausage meat with beaten egg, form into balls or cakes.

  2. Dredge the balls or cakes with flour and fry in butter.

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 + rosemarytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together465 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1,8-cineol (eucalyptus, camphor).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  5. Clove + rosemarytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the meat and fat that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out proteins so the mixture binds together.
Sage
Adds a savory, aromatic flavour that defines the sausage.
Egg
Binds the sausage meat so the balls or cakes hold their shape when fried.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, warm aroma and bite to the seasoned meat.

The step that matters

Pack the jar firmly. Pressing the mixture down hard removes air pockets, which helps prevent spoilage and keeps the meat dense and well bound during storage.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, clove, nutmeg, sage, rosemary, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, clove, nutmeg, sage, rosemary, egg. 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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