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Excellent Sausages

A sausage made from veal, pork, and pork fat seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Excellent Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the veal, lean pork, and inside fat separately, then together until finely mixed.

  2. Add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace; mix well until evenly seasoned.

  3. Press the mixture into a clean pan and store in a cool place.

Cook and serve

  1. When ready to serve, form into cakes less than 1 inch thick.

  2. Dust with flour and fry in butter for about 10 minutes, or roast in a Dutch or American oven.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides a mild, tender body that gives the sausage its soft texture.
Lean pork
Supplies meaty flavor and structure that holds the cakes together.
Inside fat of pig
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the cooked sausage juicy rather than dry.
Flour
Dusted on the cakes, it helps form a light crust that browns during frying.

The step that matters

Forming cakes thinner than 1 inch. Thick cakes can stay raw in the centre while the outside browns too quickly. Keeping them under 1 inch lets the heat reach the middle evenly during frying or roasting, so the meat cooks through while staying juicy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, pepper, nutmeg, flour, butter):

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, nutmeg, flour, butter. 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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