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To Make Oyster Sausages

A sausage made from mutton, oysters, bread, eggs, onion, suet, lemon peel, and spices, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Make Oyster Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Chop the mutton flesh as for force-meat.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mace.

  3. Mix well with the yolks of 4 eggs.

  4. Add the chopped oysters, grated French bread, chopped onion, beef suet, and lemon peel.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into sausages.

  2. Fry in butter 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,373 recipes

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

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton loin flesh
Forms the meaty base that gives the sausages their body and bite.
Yolks of eggs
Bind the chopped ingredients together and add richness to the mixture.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and soft texture throughout the filling.
French bread
Absorbs moisture and helps the mixture hold its shape while frying.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausages moist and adds savoury richness.
Butter
Conducts heat for frying and promotes browning on the outside.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden brown. Frying over moderate heat browns the surface through the Maillard reaction while the interior cooks through. High heat can scorch the butter and leave the centre underdone, so the sausages need steady heat and time.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, oyster, bread, egg, onion, beef, pepper):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Plumfits about as well
  3. Pumpkinfits about as well
  4. Limefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, oyster, bread, egg, onion, beef, 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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