Name: To Make Sausage
Ingredients: 12 pounds of meat; 6 ounces coarse sea salt; 1 ounce black pepper; 1 teaspoon saltpetre; ½ teaspoon red pepper; 4 ounces sage

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 ↓

To Make Sausage

Ingredients

Directions

Mix the salt, black pepper, saltpetre, red pepper, and sage in a bowl.
Use this mixture to season the meat.
Test the seasoning on a small portion of the meat before applying it to the entire batch.

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.

Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + sagetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together469 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).