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Sausages

A sausage made from lean beef or pork mixed with fat, salt, sugar, saltpetre, spices, lemon peel, sage, thyme, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,485 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove all skin, sinew, and gristle from the lean meat.

  2. Mince the lean meat and fat as finely as possible.

  3. Cut the fat into small pieces.

  4. Mix 1 large teaspoon of pepper and 1 large teaspoon of salt into each pound of meat.

Season and shape

  1. Pound the lean meat in a mortar with 2 tablespoons of salt, 1 tablespoon of moist sugar, 1 teaspoon of saltpetre, and 2 tablespoons of mixed spices.

  2. Add the grated lemon peel, sage, and thyme to the mixture.

  3. Form the mixture into sausages or small croquettes.

  4. Flour the formed sausages or croquettes.

Cook

  1. Heat a frying pan or Dutch oven.

  2. Brown the sausages until fully cooked.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,485 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lean beef or pork
Provides the main lean body and bulk of the sausage.
Fat
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the cooked sausage juicy rather than dry.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the meat and helps draw out and bind its proteins for a cohesive texture.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the meat and gives the cooked sausage its characteristic pink colour.
Moist sugar
Adds a little sweetness and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Mince the meat and fat finely, then cut the fat into small pieces. Fine, evenly sized pieces spread the fat through the lean meat so it melts and keeps the sausage juicy. Large chunks of fat can leave greasy pockets or dry patches.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, meat, sugar, lemon, thyme, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, meat, sugar, lemon, thyme, 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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