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Sausage Surprises

Sausage pieces coated in mashed potatoes, beaten egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sausage Surprises

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Halve the sausages and remove their skin.

  2. Coat each piece with mashed potatoes.

  3. Roll in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

Fry

  1. Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Potato + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sausages
Forms the savoury filling at the centre of each piece.
Mashed potatoes
Adds moisture and a soft layer between the sausage and the coating.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs so they stick to the coated pieces.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp outer crust that browns when fried.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying and helps the crumb coating brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to set and brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the coating soaks up grease and turns heavy. Frying hot also helps the coating seal, so the potato layer stays inside.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread. 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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