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Oyster Sausages

A savory sausage made from oysters, bread crumbs, suet, spices, and eggs, fried or boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Oyster Sausages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Remove gills from oysters, rinse well in their strained liquor, and mince them coarsely.

  2. Mix oysters with bread-crumbs, chopped beef suet, salt, pepper, cayenne, pounded mace, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Moisten the mixture with unbeaten eggs or yolks and egg whites, and blend well.

  4. Refrigerate the mixture for 2–3 hours.

Shape and cook

  1. Form the mixture into small sausages or sausage-cakes, dust with flour.

  2. Fry in butter until golden brown, or boil in water for 3 minutes, then cool.

  3. Dip boiled sausages in egg and bread-crumbs, and broil gently until lightly coloured.

  4. Cook a small bit to taste and adjust seasoning if necessary.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Bread + beeftop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Oysters
Provide the main flavour and bulk of the sausage filling.
Bread-crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the mixture body so it holds its shape.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the sausages moist and tender as they cook.
Eggs
Bind the mixture together and set when heated to hold the shape.
Flour
Dusts the shaped sausages to help them brown during frying.

The step that matters

Cook a small bit to taste and adjust seasoning. Raw oyster and seasoning flavours are hard to judge by eye, and the mixture is seasoned before cooking. Tasting a small cooked piece shows whether salt, pepper or spice needs adjusting before the whole batch is cooked.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against oyster, bread, beef, pepper, nutmeg, egg, flour. 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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