Skip to main content
Main

Sausage Meat

A mixture of lean and fat pork with spices and herbs formed into cakes and broiled or stuffed.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. In a bowl, combine the chopped lean pork and fat pork.

  2. Add bread crumbs, nutmeg, allspice, mace, lemon peel, sage, parsley, thyme, shallots, beaten egg, pepper, and salt. Mix well with your hands or pound in a mortar.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into cakes.

  2. Broil the cakes or stuff them into cleaned pig entrails.

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 + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Allspice + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together331 recipes

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

  4. Sage + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

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

Lean pork
Provides the lean meat that gives the sausage its main body and bite.
Fat pork
Adds fat, which keeps the sausage moist and juicy as it cooks.
Bread crumbs
Absorb meat juices and fat, helping the mixture stay tender and moist.
Egg
Binds the mixture together so the cakes hold their shape.
Shallots
Add a mild onion-like sweetness and aroma to the meat.

The step that matters

Mixing the meat with the seasonings. Mixing well distributes the fat, crumbs, egg and seasonings evenly. Working the meat develops its proteins so the mixture binds and holds together when shaped and cooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, bread, nutmeg, allspice, lemon, sage, parsley):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, bread, nutmeg, allspice, lemon, sage, parsley. 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.

More sausage meat recipes

Pounded 9Kentish 5Cakes 4 See all 44 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesPork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipes