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Common Sausage-meat

Contains saltpetre, which may pose food safety risks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Sausage-meat

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove all skin, sinew, and gristle from the lean meat.

  2. Mince the lean meat and fat as finely as possible.

  3. In a bowl, combine the minced meat with salt, sugar, saltpetre, and mixed spices.

  4. Mix thoroughly to create a uniform sausage mixture.

  5. Optionally, add grated lemon peel, sage, and thyme for additional flavor.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, sugar, lemon, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, sugar, lemon, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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