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Beef and Oyster Sausages

A sausage made from minced beef, mutton, suet, and oysters, seasoned with salt, pepper, mace, cloves, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Beef and Oyster Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Scald the oysters in their own liquor, then chop them finely.

  2. In a bowl, combine the minced beef, mutton, and beef suet.

  3. Add the chopped oysters, salt, pepper, mace, and pounded cloves to the meat mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them well with the other ingredients.

  5. Pack the mixture closely into a jar.

Shape and fry

  1. When ready to use, roll the mixture into small sausage shapes.

  2. Dip the sausages into beaten egg yolk.

  3. Coat the sausages with grated bread crumbs or dust with flour.

  4. Fry the sausages in fresh dripping until golden brown.

  5. Serve hot on fried bread.

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  4. Beef + muttontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  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
Provide a briny, savoury flavour that gives the sausage its character.
Minced beef
Forms the main body of the sausage and gives a meaty texture.
Minced mutton
Adds richer flavour and body to the meat mixture.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender during frying.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so the sausages hold their shape.

The step that matters

Coating the sausages. Dipping in beaten egg and coating with crumbs or flour creates a dry surface that binds and browns well in hot fat. If the surface is wet or the sausages are not firmly shaped, they can break apart or steam rather than brown.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, beef, mutton, pepper, clove, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, beef, mutton, pepper, clove, 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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