Skip to main content
Main

Mashed Potatoes

Mashed potatoes cooked with a sheep's head, barley, and herbs, served with a broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mashed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the sheep's head.

  2. Place it in a stewpan.

  3. Add the onions, turnip, carrot, leek, Scotch barley, salt, sugar, pepper, and herbs tied together.

  4. Pour in the water.

  5. Stir the barley.

  6. Skim frequently.

  7. Simmer for 2.5 hours.

  8. Remove the head.

  9. Skin the tongue.

  10. Skim off the fat from the broth.

  11. Serve it in a tureen.

Make the mashed potatoes

  1. Mash the potatoes with a wooden spoon.

  2. Mix in the dripping and boiling milk.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mashed potatoes on a flat dish.

  2. Put the head on top.

  3. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

  4. Add small pieces of dripping on the head for basting.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes until browned.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Starch that mashes into a smooth, soft base for the dish.
Dripping
Adds fat and richness to the mashed potatoes and helps the top brown while baking.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potatoes.
Sheep's head
Main meat, cooked in the broth until tender and then served on top of the potatoes.
Scotch barley
Thickens the broth and adds body as it cooks.

The step that matters

Skim the broth frequently. Fat and fine foam rise to the surface while the head simmers. Removing them regularly keeps the broth clear and stops it from tasting greasy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, leek, barley, sugar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, leek, barley, sugar, pepper, parsley. 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.

More mashed potatoes recipes

Baked 15Cheese 5Browned 4Garlic 4with Onions 4Baked Salmon Over 3 See all 312 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes