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Spadbury's Oxford Sausages

A sausage made of pork, veal, and beef suet with soaked bread, sage, pepper, and salt, smoked and optionally boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spadbury's Oxford Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Combine the pork, veal, and beef suet in a bowl.

  2. Add the soaked bread, sage, pepper, and salt, then mix well.

Stuff and dry

  1. Stuff the mixture into prepared casings, tying them off every 8-9 inches.

  2. Hang the sausages to smoke, wrapped in muslin, until high-dried.

  3. Optionally, boil before serving.

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. Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

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

  5. 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 lean meat body and texture of the sausage.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender as it dries.
Veal
Contributes mild, delicate meat flavour and a soft texture to the filling.
Soaked bread crumb
Absorbs and holds moisture, keeping the filling tender rather than crumbly.

The step that matters

Hang the sausages to smoke until high-dried. Drying removes moisture slowly so the sausage firms and keeps well. Drying too quickly or unevenly can leave a soft centre or spoil the meat, so the air and muslin need to allow steady drying.

Swap the sage

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

  1. Sagethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, veal, beef, pepper. 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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