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Oyster Sausages

A savory sausage made from oysters, bread crumbs, beef suet, spices, eggs, and flour, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the oysters

  1. Remove gills from oysters, rinse well in their strained liquor, and mince them coarsely.

Make the mixture

  1. Mix the minced oysters with bread crumbs and chopped beef suet.

  2. Add salt, black pepper, cayenne, ground mace, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Moisten the mixture with beaten eggs or egg yolks and egg white.

  4. Blend the ingredients well and refrigerate for 2-3 hours.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into small sausages or sausage cakes.

  2. Dust with flour and fry in butter until golden brown.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Native oysters
Provide the main flavor and bulk of the sausage filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausages moist and tender during frying.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together so it holds its shape when fried.
Flour
Dusting helps the outside brown and form a crisp golden crust.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden brown. The flour dusting and butter brown through the Maillard reaction and caramelization, so the surface needs enough heat to colour without burning. Frying too cool leaves the sausages pale and greasy, while too hot scorches the outside before the centre is cooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (oyster, bread, beef, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, beef, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour. 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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