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Sausage Meat

A mixture of finely chopped ham and pork seasoned with salt, pepper, sage, sugar, cloves, mace, and nutmeg, formed into balls or stuffed into casings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sausage Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove the skin from the hams and shoulder, then chop the meat finely.

  2. Season the chopped meat with salt, pepper, sage, and sugar.

  3. If desired, add cloves, mace, and nutmeg for spiced flavor.

Store and cook

  1. Store the mixture in a dry, cool place.

  2. Form the mixture into balls and fry, or stuff into casings for dried sausages.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Sage + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together642 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Sage + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together731 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork hams
Provide the lean meat that forms the body of the sausage mixture.
Pork shoulder
Adds fat that keeps the mixture moist and tender when cooked.
Sage
Adds a savoury, aromatic flavour that defines the sausage.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the salt and encourages browning.

The step that matters

Chopping the meat finely. Fine chopping spreads fat and lean meat evenly, so the mixture binds and cooks with a consistent texture rather than crumbling or turning greasy in patches.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pork, pepper, sage, sugar, clove, nutmeg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pork, pepper, sage, sugar, clove, nutmeg. 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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