Name: Spaclbury’s Oxford Sausages
Ingredients: 1½ pounds pork, chopped; 1½ pounds veal, chopped; ¾ pound beef suet, chopped; crumb of 1 penny loaf, soaked in water; 1 teaspoon dried sage; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Spaclbury’s Oxford Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

Chop the pork and veal, removing skin and sinews.
Mix the meats with the beef suet.

Mix the filling

Soak the bread crumb in water and add to the meat mixture.
Stir in the sage, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and dry

Stuff the mixture into an ox-gut, tying the ends.
Hang to smoke, wrapped in muslin, until high-dried.

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.

Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,930 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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 main meaty body and fat that give the sausage its texture.
Veal: Adds mild, tender meat that balances the stronger flavour of the pork.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it dries.
Bread crumb: Soaked in water, it holds moisture and helps the filling stay tender.