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Veal Sausages

A mixture of veal, pork or bacon, sage, anchovy, pepper, and salt formed into balls and fried or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Veal Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Combine veal, fat pork or bacon, sage, anchovy, pepper, and salt in a mortar.

  2. Beat the mixture until well combined.

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into balls and fry them.

  2. Alternatively, stuff into casings and either fry or boil.

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

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

  3. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Veal + anchovytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Veal + sagetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together670 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the lean meat base that gives the sausage its main body and texture.
Fat pork or bacon
Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it cooks.
Sage
Contributes a savory, aromatic herbal flavor.
Anchovy
Adds a deep savory background flavor that enhances the meat.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until well combined. Beating works the ground meat and fat into a cohesive paste, so the sausage holds together when formed and fried rather than crumbling.

Swap the sage

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

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

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