Name: Common Sausages
Ingredients: 3 pounds pork (fat and lean); 2 teaspoons salt; 1 teaspoon beaten pepper; 3 teaspoons finely shredded sage

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Sausages

Ingredients

3 pounds pork (fat and lean)
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon beaten pepper
3 teaspoons finely shredded sage

Directions

Prepare the meat

Chop the pork very fine, free from skin and gristles.

Season and fill

Season the meat with salt, pepper, and sage, mixing well.
Clean the sausage casings thoroughly and fill them with the meat mixture.

Shape and cook

Roll the sausages to your desired size and fry them.

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.

Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,527 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork: Provides the meat and fat that give sausages their body and juiciness.
Salt: Seasons the meat and helps draw out proteins so the sausage holds together.
Sage: Adds the herby aroma that defines this sausage.