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Lentil Sausages

A vegetarian sausage made from lentils, onion, herbs, lemon zest, and breadcrumbs, pan‑fried and served with brown sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lentil Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Make the lentil mixture

  1. Wash the lentils and place them in a saucepan with water, sliced onion, herbs, lemon zest, nutmeg, and sage.

  2. Boil gently with the lid off until the water is absorbed and the lentils are tender.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve, season well, and add breadcrumbs if too moist.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape into small sausages or cork shapes, coat in egg and breadcrumbs, and fry in hot oil.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish lined with lace paper, garnished with fried parsley, and offer brown sauce on the side.

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. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Nutmeg + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Red lentils
Cooked and sieved, they form the bulk and firm body of the sausages.
Egg
Coating binds the shaped mixture and helps the breadcrumbs crisp when fried.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb excess moisture so the mixture holds its shape, and add a crisp outer coating.
Onion
Cooks down in the water, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the mixture.
Lemon zest
Adds bright aromatic oils that lift the flavour of the lentil mixture.

The step that matters

Sieving and judging the moisture. Lentils must be cooked until fully tender and the water absorbed, then sieved smooth. If the mixture is too wet it will not hold its shape when fried, so breadcrumbs are needed to firm it up.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lentils, onion, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lentils, onion, lemon, nutmeg, pepper, egg. 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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