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Sausage Cakes

Sausage cakes are baked patties of sausage meat served with mashed potatoes and tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sausage Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine sausage meat, parsley, lemon rind, beaten egg, and salt.

  3. Form the mixture into round flat cakes of even size.

  4. Place the cakes on a greased baking tin.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 20 minutes until cooked through.

  2. Serve on a bed of mashed potatoes with hot tomato sauce around the base.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + tomatotop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,592 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

Sausage meat
Forms the main body of the cakes and provides the savory flavor and fat.
Beaten egg
Binds the mixture so the cakes hold their shape while baking.
Parsley
Adds fresh, green aroma that lightens the rich sausage.
Lemon rind
Adds bright aromatic oils that cut through the richness of the sausage.

The step that matters

Forming the cakes of even size. Cakes of uneven thickness cook at different rates, so thin ones can dry out or burn while thick centers stay undercooked. Even, flat shapes ensure the whole batch reaches doneness together.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, parsley, egg, potato, tomato, sauce):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, egg, potato, tomato, sauce. 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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