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D Beef Sausages

A fried beef sausage made with thyme, mustard, lemon, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

D Beef Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop the steak-piece fine or have your butcher do it.

  2. Season the meat with thyme, salt, pepper, mustard, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into round, flat cakes.

  2. Roll the cakes in flour.

  3. Fry in hot butter or dripping, turning as they brown.

  4. Drain and 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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together913 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Steak-piece
Provides the main body of the cakes, holding them together once finely chopped.
Flour
Coats the cakes so they brown evenly and develop a crisp surface in the fat.
Butter or dripping
Conducts heat to the cakes and browns their surface while adding richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, savoury flavour that contrasts with the richness of the meat.

The step that matters

Fry in hot butter or dripping, turning as they brown. The fat must be hot enough to brown the floured surface quickly. If it is too cool, the cakes absorb fat and turn greasy and pale instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against thyme, pepper, lemon, 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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