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Vegetable Sausages

Vegetable sausages made from lentils, vegetables, eggs, and bread crumbs, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,097 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak and cook the lentils or peas, then pound them well in a mortar.

  2. Chop the carrots, parsnip, and onions very finely.

  3. Mix the chopped vegetables with the peas, adding parsley, salt, pepper, eggs, and bread crumbs.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into sausage shapes.

  2. Coat each sausage with egg and bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the sausages in boiling oil 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. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsnip + lentilstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lentils or yellow peas
Provide the bulk and body that hold the sausage mixture together.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and form a coating that helps the sausages brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add structure so the sausages hold their shape.
Onions
Add moisture and savory flavor to the mixture.
Carrots
Add moisture, sweetness, and color to the mixture.

The step that matters

Shape the mixture into sausages. If the mixture is too wet or loose, the sausages will fall apart in the hot oil. Pounding the legumes well and binding with egg and bread crumbs gives the mixture enough cohesion to hold its shape while frying.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, pepper, parsnip, egg, bread, parsley, lentils):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, pepper, parsnip, egg, bread, parsley, lentils. 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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