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Sausages, with Cress and Pickles

Sausages served with toasted bread, watercress dressed in olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and sweet pickles on the side.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Watercress and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 684 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sausages, with Cress and Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sausages

  1. Cook the sausages until they are a nice brown color.

  2. Glaze the sausages.

Serve

  1. Serve the glazed sausages on a hot dish with toast underneath.

  2. Dress the watercress with olive oil, vinegar, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

  3. Serve sweet pickles on the side.

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. Watercress + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together684 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Olive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 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

Sausages
Browning develops flavor on the surface, and the glaze adds a glossy finish.
Toast
Serves as a base that soaks up juices from the sausages.
Watercress
Its peppery leaves add freshness and a sharp contrast to the rich sausages.
Olive oil
Carries flavor and adds richness to the watercress dressing.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the watercress and cuts the richness of the sausages.

The step that matters

Cook the sausages until they are a nice brown color. Browning relies on the Maillard reaction, which needs dry surfaces and steady heat. Pale or steamed sausages lack the deep flavor the dish depends on.

“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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