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Oyster Sausages

A sausage made from oysters, veal, suet, bread, egg, and seasonings, formed and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Oyster Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters and bread

  1. Open the oysters, preserve the liquor, remove the gills, and cut the oysters into very small pieces.

  2. Strain the liquor over the bread, let it soak until soft, then drain off any unabsorbed liquor.

  3. Beat the bread with a fork until no lumps remain.

Make the sausage mixture

  1. Pass the veal through a meat grinder 2 or 3 times.

  2. Add the suet, soaked bread, salt, and pepper to taste, then mix in the oysters and egg.

  3. Optionally, pound the mixture in a mortar for a finer texture.

Shape and fry

  1. Press the mixture into sausage casings or shape into small sausages.

  2. Roll lightly in seasoned flour and fry in hot butter or fat.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Oyster + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

  5. Oyster + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and moisture to the sausage mixture.
Veal
Forms the lean meat base that gives the sausage its body.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender during frying.
Bread
Soaked in oyster liquor, it absorbs moisture and keeps the mixture light and tender.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the sausages hold their shape.

The step that matters

Beating the soaked bread smooth. Lumps of bread stay as dry pockets in the mixture and won't blend evenly with the meat. Fully softened, beaten bread distributes moisture through the sausage so it stays tender rather than crumbly when fried.

“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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