Skip to main content
Main

Spices for Sausages

A blend of coriander, aniseed, cloves, basil, and sage ground into a fine powder for seasoning sausages and pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Basil and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 223 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Spices for Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spice blend

  1. Pound all the spices into a fine powder.

  2. Sift the powder to remove any larger pieces.

Use and store

  1. Mix the spice blend into pig's puddings, sausages, or fresh roasted pork.

  2. Store the mixture in a dry place in a tightly covered tin box.

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. Basil + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together223 recipes

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

  2. Coriander + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Clove + basiltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + sagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Coriander + sagetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 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

Coriander seeds
Provide a warm, citrusy aroma that defines the blend's flavour.
Aniseed
Adds a sweet, licorice-like aroma that rounds out the spice mix.
Cloves
Contribute a strong, warm aroma that flavours the sausage and pork.
Basil
Adds a herbal, aromatic note to the blend.
Sage
Adds an earthy, savoury herbal aroma suited to pork.

The step that matters

Sifting the powder. Larger pieces left in the powder won't blend evenly into meat and can give gritty, uneven bites of spice. Sifting keeps the mixture fine and uniform, so flavour spreads evenly through the sausage or pork.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, basil, sage):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, basil, sage. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes