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Very Nice Sausages, or Balls, From Cold Mutton

A sausage or meatball made from cold boiled mutton, suet, herbs, bread, and eggs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Very Nice Sausages, or Balls, From Cold Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the mutton very finely.

  2. Season with pepper, salt, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Add beef suet, pounded sweet herbs, grated bread, and beaten eggs. Mix well.

  4. Press into a pot.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape into sausages or roll into balls.

  2. Fry until golden brown.

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 + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Under-done boiled leg of mutton
Provides the main meat body and flavour for the sausage.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the chopped meat and bread into a mixture that holds its shape.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps give the filling a softer, lighter texture.

The step that matters

Fry until golden brown. Frying gives the surface browning through the Maillard reaction, which adds savoury flavour and colour. The meat is already cooked, so the frying mainly builds colour and crust, and over-frying can dry the sausage out.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, nutmeg, beef, bread, egg, clove. 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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