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Common Sausage-meat

A traditional sausage made from lean beef or pork mixed with fat, salt, spices, and aromatics.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Sausage-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove skin, sinew, and gristle from the meat.

  2. Mince the lean and fat meat as finely as possible.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of pepper and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt per pound of meat. Mix the meat thoroughly.

Season the mixture

  1. Pound the lean meat with 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt, 1 tablespoon of moist sugar, 1 teaspoon of saltpetre, and 2 tablespoons of mixed spices.

  2. Add grated lemon peel, sage, and thyme to the mixture.

  3. Chop 4 pounds of leg of pork and 2 pounds of fat finely.

  4. Mix the pork mixture with nutmeg, cloves, grated lemon peel, mace, salt, and black pepper.

Stuff

  1. Stuff the mixture into cleaned and salted skins.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef or pork
Provides the main meaty body and bite of the sausage.
Fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the sausage juicy as it cooks.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cured colour and flavour.
Moist sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps balance the salt and spices.

The step that matters

Mince the meat finely and mix it thoroughly. Even mixing spreads the salt, cure and spices through the meat so every bite seasons evenly. Well-distributed fat also keeps the sausage juicy rather than dry or greasy in pockets.

“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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