Name: Sausage-meat Cake, Or, Pain De Porc Frais
Ingredients: 2 to 3 pounds good sausage meat; Spices (to taste); Sage (to taste) or thyme and parsley (to taste); Minced eschalots (optional); ½ ounce coarse sea salt; ¼ ounce black pepper

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 ↓

Sausage-meat Cake, Or, Pain De Porc Frais

Ingredients

2 to 3 pounds good sausage meat
Spices (to taste)
Sage (to taste) or thyme and parsley (to taste)
Minced eschalots (optional)
½ ounce coarse sea salt
¼ ounce black pepper

Directions

Season the sausage meat with spices, sage, or thyme and parsley.
Press the mixture into a pan.
If desired, mix in minced eschalots.
For seasoning, use ½ ounce of coarse sea salt and ¼ ounce of black pepper for each pound of sausage meat.

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + sagetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).