Name: Beef Sausage
Ingredients: 3 pounds lean beef; 1½ pounds suet; powdered sage to taste; allspice to taste; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Sage and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 331 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Chop the beef and suet very fine.
Season the mixture with sage, allspice, pepper, and salt.

Cook

Form into cakes and fry like pork sausage.
Alternatively, drop spoonfuls between layers of batter on a griddle and fry like pancakes.

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.

Sage + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together331 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + allspicetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,940 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).