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Summer Sausages

Summer sausages are small beef cakes made with bread crumbs, flour, salt, pepper, celery salt, and boiled water, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Summer Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

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

Cook

  1. Form the mixture into small cakes.

  2. Fry the cakes in a skillet 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. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  4. Beef + celerytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + celerytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,905 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the meaty base and savory flavor of the cakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the boiling water and help bind the mixture into cakes.
All-purpose flour
Helps bind the mixture and adds body to the cakes.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with boiling water and mix well. Adding the water evenly lets the bread crumbs swell and hydrate, so the mixture holds together when shaped. Uneven moisture can leave dry pockets that crumble or wet spots that stay soft and fall apart during frying.

Swap the celery

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

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, flour, 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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