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French Sausage Spice

A blend of ground black pepper, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, aniseed, and coriander seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 ↓

French Sausage Spice

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a mortar.

  2. Preserve the mixture in a stoppered bottle.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + coriandertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground black pepper
Provides the main sharp, pungent heat that defines the spice blend.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, aromatic pungency that carries much of the blend's flavour.
Ground cloves
Contributes intense, sweet-warm aroma that lingers in the blend.
Ground nutmeg
Adds warm, sweet, woody aroma to the blend.
Ground aniseed
Adds a distinct sweet, licorice-like aroma.
Ground coriander seeds
Adds citrusy, floral aroma and mild sweetness to the blend.

Swap the coriander

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ginger, clove, nutmeg. 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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