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Common Sausage-meat

A mixture of lean and fat pork seasoned with sage, pepper, and salt, formed into cakes and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Common Sausage-meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove skin, sinews, and gristle from the pork.

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

  3. Rub the dried sage leaves to powder and mix 3 teaspoons per pound of meat.

  4. Combine the minced pork with the sage, pepper, and salt, mixing well with your hands.

Store

  1. Pack the mixture tightly into a stone jar and cover it.

  2. Store the jar in a cool, dry place.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the sausage meat into flat cakes about 1 inch thick and the size of a dollar.

  2. Dredge the cakes with flour.

  3. Fry the cakes in butter or dripping over low heat until browned on both sides and cooked through.

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

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

  2. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Lean young fresh pork
Provides the main meat body and structure of the sausage.
Fat pork
Adds moisture and richness so the cooked sausage stays juicy.
Dried sage
Adds the characteristic savory, aromatic flavour of sausage.
Black pepper
Adds sharp, aromatic heat that balances the rich pork.
Flour
Dredged on the cakes to help them brown well during frying.

The step that matters

Fry over low heat. Shaped cakes are thick and raw in the centre, so low heat lets the interior cook through before the outside burns. Browning is driven by surface heat, so a too-hot pan darkens the flour and fat before the meat is safe.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, flour, butter. 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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