Name: Sausages, to Make
Ingredients: 1 lb pork (fat and lean, without skin or gristle); 1 lb lean veal; 1 lb beef suet; 1 lb breadcrumbs; rind of 1 small lemon (minced); 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg (grated); 3 sage leaves (finely chopped); 1 teaspoon savoury herbs; 1 teaspoon marjoram

Why it works: Sage and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 507 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Sausages, to Make

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

Chop the pork, veal, and suet finely together.
Add the breadcrumbs, minced lemon rind, and grated nutmeg.
Wash and chop the sage leaves very finely; add these along with the remaining ingredients to the meat mixture.
Mix thoroughly, then either stuff into sausage skins or form into small cakes.

Cook

Flour the cakes and fry them for about 10 minutes.

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.

Sage + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together507 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Lemon + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together957 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Nutmeg + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together687 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pork + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together887 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork: Provides fat and lean meat that give the sausage its body and juiciness.
Veal: Adds a soft, delicate lean texture to the meat mixture.
Beef suet: Adds fat that keeps the sausage moist and tender during cooking.
Breadcrumbs: Absorb juices and fat, helping the mixture hold together and stay tender.

“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.