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Oxford Sausage Meat

A sausage mixture of veal, pork, beef suet, bread crumbs, herbs, and spices, formed into cakes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Oxford Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the veal, pork, and suet separately as finely as possible.

  2. Mix in the bread crumbs, lemon zest, grated nutmeg, and herbs. Season to taste and chop everything finely.

  3. Mix thoroughly with your hands and press tightly into an earthenware crock.

Cook

  1. When ready to cook, form into flat cakes and fry in good drippings.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean veal
Provides the main lean meat body, giving the sausage its base texture.
Fresh pork
Adds fat and richness, keeping the cooked sausage moist and flavorful.
Beef suet
Adds hard fat that melts during frying, adding moisture and richness.
Bread crumbs
Absorbs juices and fat, helping the mixture hold together and stay tender.

The step that matters

Chopping the meat finely and mixing thoroughly. Fine chopping and thorough mixing spread the fat and seasonings evenly through the meat, so the cakes cook uniformly and hold together rather than crumbling.

“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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