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Sauce

To Make Sausage Meat

A mixture of lean pork, pork fat, sage, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and black pepper, formed into sausage meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Make Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

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

  2. Chop the lean pork and fat as fine as possible.

  3. Mix the lean pork and fat together well.

  4. Combine the sage, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and black pepper, then mix into the meat.

Pack and store

  1. Pack the mixture firmly into stone jars.

  2. Pour melted lard over the meat and cover the vessel.

  3. Alternatively, pack the mixture into muslin bags, dip them in melted lard, and hang them up.

  4. Store sausage meat in a cool, dry place.

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

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

  4. Sugar + peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pork + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,579 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,401 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

Lean pork
Provides the main meat structure and lean body of the sausage meat.
Pork fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the meat tender and juicy as it sets.
Powdered sage
Adds the characteristic herbal aroma that defines the flavour of the sausage.
Fine salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out and bind its proteins for a firmer texture.
Sugar
Adds a mild sweetness that balances the salt and spice.

The step that matters

Chop the pork and fat as fine as possible. Fine chopping spreads the fat evenly through the lean meat, so the sausage stays tender and juicy rather than greasy in some spots and dry in others.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Gingerfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, 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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