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Oyster Sausages

A sausage made from minced mutton, beef suet, oysters, sage, spices, eggs, and bread crumbs, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper 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 ↓

Oyster Sausages

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the minced mutton, chopped beef suet, oysters with their liquor, and chopped sage.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, pounded cloves, and beaten mace.

  3. Add the eggs and mix in enough grated bread crumb to bind the mixture.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into sausages or cakes.

  2. Fry the sausages or cakes 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. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

Lean mutton
Provides the meaty body and bulk of the sausage.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and rich while cooking.
Oysters
Contribute savoury flavour and moisture to the mixture.
Eggs
Help bind the mixture together and set it when cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold its shape.

The step that matters

Binding with bread crumbs. Add crumbs gradually until the mixture just holds together. Too few leaves the cakes loose and likely to break apart in the butter, while too many makes them dry and dense.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, beef, oyster, sage, 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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