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Good Sausages

A sausage made from veal, pork, and pork fat seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Good Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the veal, pork, and inside fat separately, then together until well mixed.

  2. Sprinkle in the salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace, and mix until evenly seasoned.

  3. Press the mixture into a clean pan and store in a cool place.

Cook

  1. When ready to cook, form the mixture into cakes about 1 inch thick.

  2. Fry the cakes in a little butter for about 10 minutes until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the lean, tender body of the sausage mixture.
Pork
Adds richness and juiciness to the lean meat.
Inside fat of the pig
Supplies fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender during frying.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps firm its texture.
Butter
Conducts heat in the pan and adds fat for browning the cakes.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in a little butter for about 10 minutes until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, which adds flavour, while the interior must cook through. Too hot a pan can scorch the outside before the centre is cooked.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, nutmeg, butter. 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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