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Mock Sausage

A bean-based sausage made from lima beans, breadcrumbs, egg, and seasonings, baked or fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mock Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook the lima beans until tender.

  2. Rub the cooked beans through a sieve.

  3. In a bowl, combine the sieved beans, bread crumbs, egg, fat, and seasoning.

Shape and cook

  1. Shape the mixture into sausage forms.

  2. Roll the sausages in cornmeal or dip them in egg and then in crumbs.

  3. Brown the sausages in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or cook them in hot 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Lima beans + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Lima beans + parsleytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together126 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Lima beans + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together468 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried lima beans
Provide the bulk and body of the sausage mixture once cooked and sieved.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together in shaped sausages.
Egg
Binds the mixture so the sausages keep their shape while cooking.
Fat
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the outside brown.

The step that matters

Rub the cooked beans through a sieve. Beans that are not pressed fine stay grainy and crumbly, so the mixture will not bind well or form smooth, cohesive sausages.

Swap the lima beans

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, egg, pepper, parsley):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Lima beansthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, egg, pepper, parsley. 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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