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Kentish Sausage-meat

A pork sausage made with lean and fat pork, salt, pepper, sage, and optional nutmeg and mace, formed into cakes and roasted.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Kentish Sausage-meat

Why it works: Sage and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 642 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Kentish Sausage-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sausage

  1. Combine the lean and fat pork in a bowl.

  2. Sprinkle the salt, black pepper, and minced sage over the meat.

  3. Mix the ingredients thoroughly using a chopping knife.

  4. Fry a small portion to test the seasoning and adjust if necessary.

  5. If desired, add nutmeg and mace for extra flavor.

Shape and roast

  1. Form the mixture into cakes and flour them lightly.

  2. Roast the cakes in a Dutch oven, turning frequently to prevent scorching.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean pork
Provides the meaty body and structure of the sausage.
Fat pork
Adds moisture and richness so the cakes stay juicy while cooking.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out and bind its proteins.
Sage
Adds its aromatic, savory herbal flavor to the sausage.

The step that matters

Testing the seasoning by frying a small portion. Raw meat gives no sense of final seasoning, and salt and spices can be hard to judge by eye. Frying a small test piece lets you taste and adjust before shaping the whole batch.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, sage, mace):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, sage, mace. 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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