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Sausage with Dried Beef

A sausage made with dried beef, seasoned, hung, then stewed and thickened with flour, finished with egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Sausage with Dried Beef

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sausage

  1. Mix the meat with salt, black pepper, sage, cayenne, and optional ginger thoroughly in a large bowl.

  2. Stuff the mixture into casings or muslin bags and hang in a cold, dry place, or partially cook and pack in jars with a layer of lard.

Cook and finish

  1. Cut the sausage into small pieces and place in a stewpan with enough water to cover.

  2. Slice the dried beef, remove fat and gristle, and add to the stewpan. Cook until done.

  3. Thicken slightly with flour.

  4. Stir in the egg quickly, ensuring it shows in little flakes of white and yellow.

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

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

  2. Sage + gingertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together157 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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

Meat
Forms the body of the sausage and provides its main flavour and texture.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps preserve it during curing.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so it becomes slightly body-rich.
Egg
Stirred in at the end, it sets into delicate flakes that enrich the liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg quickly. If the egg is added slowly or the liquid is too hot or stirred loosely, it cooks in clumps rather than fine flakes. Quick, steady stirring disperses the egg so it sets into thin strands and flakes throughout the liquid.

Swap the ginger

The recipe marks ginger as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, sage, flour, egg):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, sage, flour, 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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