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Mock Sausage

A fried bread and cold meat mixture formed into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage 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 ↓

Mock Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the dry bread in water until soft.

  2. Chop an equal amount of any kind of cold meat finely.

Season and shape

  1. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and sage.

  2. Form the mixture into small cakes.

Cook

  1. 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 + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  2. Bread + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Bread + sagetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry bread
Soaked bread adds moisture and binds the meat into a cohesive mixture.
Cold meat
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the sausage cakes.
Sage
Adds aromatic herbal flavor that characterises traditional sausage.

The step that matters

Fry the cakes in a skillet until golden brown. Browning depends on surface heat and dryness; cakes crowded in the pan or too wet will steam instead of browning, and the Maillard reaction that builds flavor and color is lost.

Swap the sage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, meat, 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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