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Summer Sausage

A fried sausage-shaped cake made from boiled beef, breadcrumbs, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Summer Sausage

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine chopped beef, bread crumbs, flour, salt, pepper, sage, marjoram, and thyme and celery salt.

  2. Moisten the mixture with boiling water and mix well.

  3. Form the mixture into sausage-shaped cakes.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat butter in a skillet and fry the cakes until golden brown.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together507 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + celerytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,193 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled beef
Provides the main meaty body and flavor of the cakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the boiling water and bind the mixture so the cakes hold their shape.
Flour
Helps bind the mixture and gives the cakes a firmer structure.
Butter
Fat for frying that adds richness and promotes browning on the outside.

The step that matters

Moisten with boiling water and mix well. Bread crumbs must absorb the water evenly; uneven moistening leaves dry pockets that crumble and wet pockets that make the cakes hard to shape and fry cleanly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, flour, pepper, sage, marjoram, thyme):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Rosemaryfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, flour, pepper, sage, marjoram, thyme. 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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