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Good Sausages

A sausage made from veal, pork, and pig fat seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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 ↓

Good Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the veal, pork, and pig fat separately, then together until finely mixed.

  2. Sprinkle in the salt, pepper, nutmeg, and mace; mix well until evenly seasoned.

  3. Press the mixture into a clean pan and store in a cool place.

Cook

  1. When ready to cook, form the mixture into cakes about 1 inch thick.

  2. Dust the cakes with flour and fry in a little butter for about 10 minutes until golden.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides lean meat that gives the sausage its body and firm bite.
Pork
Adds meat flavour and structure to the mixture.
Pig fat
Adds fat that keeps the cakes moist and tender while they cook.
Salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out proteins that bind the mixture.
Flour (in the method)
Dusted on the cakes to help them brown evenly in the butter.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes. Fat that is too cool lets the cakes absorb butter and cook unevenly, while a moderate heat lets the flour-dusted surface brown gently before the centre is fully cooked through.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, pepper, nutmeg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, nutmeg, butter. 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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