Name: Mw Sausages
Ingredients: 1 lb clod or sticking piece of beef; ½ cup bread crumbs, soaked in water; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon nutmeg; ¼ teaspoon allspice; 1 teaspoon dried marjoram; hog casings

Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Mw Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Remove the meat from the bone and chop it finely.
Gradually add the soaked bread crumbs to the meat.
Season the mixture with pepper, salt, nutmeg, allspice, and marjoram.
Stuff the mixture into cleaned hog casings.

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.

Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,331 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Allspice + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together342 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together687 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,609 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram):

Winter savoryfits better
Thymefits better
Sagefits about as well
Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, pepper, nutmeg, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.