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Sausages Without Skins

Sausages made from equal parts meat and suet, spiced with sage, nutmeg, white pepper, salt, eggs, and bread crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 642 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sausages Without Skins

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the meat and suet very fine.

  2. Beat them in a mortar with sage, nutmeg, white pepper, and salt.

Shape and cook

  1. Mix in the yolks of eggs and bread crumbs.

  2. Form the mixture into the shape of sausages.

  3. Fry the sausages over low heat.

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. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + white peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the main body of the sausage and gives it its savory bulk.
Suet
Adds fat, which keeps the sausages moist and tender as they cook.
Egg yolks
Bind the mixture together so it holds its sausage shape.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together and stay tender.

The step that matters

Fry the sausages over low heat. Low heat lets the fat and the binding egg render and set gently through the centre before the outside browns too far. Cooking too hot can scorch the surface while the inside stays raw or the sausages split and crumble.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sage, nutmeg, egg, bread):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sage, nutmeg, egg, bread. 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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