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Potatoes Stuffed

A baked potato dish filled with lobster, anchovy, celery, egg yolk, bread crumbs, butter, and gravy, garnished with parsley, lemon, and beetroot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Potatoes Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Parboil the potatoes in salted water until tender.

  2. Scoop out the center of each potato.

Make the forcemeat

  1. In a mortar, pound the lobster meat with the anchovy, celery, egg yolk, bread crumbs, and butter.

  2. Mix with enough meat gravy to form a stiff mass.

Bake and serve

  1. Fill the potatoes with the forcemeat and place them in a baking dish with additional meat gravy.

  2. Cook until the potatoes are soft.

  3. Thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour.

  4. Before serving, sprinkle with finely chopped parsley.

  5. Serve the potatoes in a hot dish, pour gravy around them, and garnish with lemon and beetroot slices.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the hollow shells that hold the forcemeat and become soft and tender when cooked.
Lobster meat
Provides the main seafood flavor and body of the forcemeat filling.
Egg yolk
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together when shaped and cooked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help give the forcemeat a stiff, fillable texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the forcemeat and enriches the gravy.
Meat gravy
Supplies moisture that keeps the filling and potatoes from drying out while baking.

The step that matters

Mix with enough meat gravy to form a stiff mass. Too little gravy leaves the forcemeat crumbly and hard to pack, while too much makes it loose and wet, so it may spill out and dilute the filling during baking.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, meat, lobster, anchovy, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, meat, lobster, anchovy, egg, bread, butter. 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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