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Oxford Sausages

A sausage made from pork, veal, beef suet, eggs, sage, pepper, and salt.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Chop the pork and veal into small pieces.

  2. Pound the meat in a marble mortar until tender.

  3. Add the finely chopped suet to the pounded meat.

  4. Beat the eggs well and pour over the meat mixture.

  5. Knead the mixture with clean hands, adding sage, pepper, and salt.

Store and cook

  1. Press the mixture into a wide-mouthed jar and store in a cool place.

  2. Form into small balls or stuff into cleaned casings when ready to use.

  3. Fry with very little grease or lard, as the sausages will release enough fat.

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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

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

  5. Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,784 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork
Provides the lean meat body that gives the sausage its main bite.
Veal
Adds a mild, tender meat texture to the mixture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and rich as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the meat mixture together so it holds its shape.
Dried sage
Adds the herbal aroma that defines the sausage's flavor.

The step that matters

Frying with very little grease. The suet and meat release fat as they heat, so adding much extra grease can make the sausages greasy. Frying gently with only a little fat lets the released fat do the work and helps the outside brown without burning.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, beef, egg, 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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