Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Sausages Without Skins
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the meat
Remove the meat from the skins and weigh it.
Wash and mince the veal, pork, and suet as finely as possible.
Mix the sausage
Add the sage, salt, and pepper to the minced meat and mix well.
Soak the crust of the French roll in water until wet, then squeeze out the water.
Combine the soaked bread and beaten eggs with the meat mixture and work together with your hands.
Store and cook
Press the mixture into a clean earthen pan and store it for up to a week.
When ready to use, divide the mixture into 18 parts, roll into thick sausages, and fry in sweet butter until cooked.
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.
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Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,388 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Veal + porktop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,930 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Veal + beeftop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,784 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Lean veal
- Provides the main lean meat body and mild flavor of the sausage.
- Lean pork
- Adds lean meat and savory flavor to the sausage mixture.
- Fresh beef suet
- Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender as it cooks.
- Eggs
- Bind the meat mixture together so it holds its shape.
- French roll
- Soaked bread that adds moisture and softens the texture of the mixture.
The step that matters
Mincing the meat finely. Fine mincing spreads the fat and lean meat evenly, so the sausage stays tender and holds together instead of crumbling or turning dry when fried.
Swap the sage
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, beef, pepper, egg):
- Parsleyfits about as well
- Sagethe original
- Marjoramfits about as well
- Thymefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, beef, pepper, egg. 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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