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Venison or Game Sausages

A sausage made from minced venison or game meat mixed with bacon fat, spices, and brandy, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Venison or Game Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Carefully remove all skin and sinew from the meat.

  2. Mince the meat with the bacon fat.

Season and shape

  1. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and brandy.

  2. Stuff the mixture into sausage skins or form into patties with an egg.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll the sausages in flour, then dip in melted butter and coat with bread crumbs.

  2. Fry the sausages until golden brown.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Venison or game meat
Forms the main body of the sausage and gives it its meaty flavour and texture.
Bacon fat
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and juicy during cooking.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the seasoned mixture.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns when the sausages are fried.

The step that matters

Fry the sausages until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the crumb coating and cooks the meat through. Too high a heat scorches the crumbs before the centre is done, while too low a heat leaves the coating pale and greasy.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (venison, pepper, nutmeg, brandy, flour, butter, bread):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovethe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against venison, pepper, nutmeg, brandy, flour, butter, bread. 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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