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Toad In-a-hole

A British dish of sausages baked in a batter of flour, milk, and egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Toad In-a-hole

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and salt.

  2. In another bowl, beat the egg and add the milk.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the dry ingredients until just combined.

  4. Beat the batter well to ensure lightness, then let it stand in a cool place.

Prepare and bake

  1. Remove the skins from the sausages by dipping them in boiling water.

  2. Place the sausages in a greased pie dish and pour the batter over them.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  4. If the top browns too quickly, move to a cooler part of the oven or cover with a damp paper.

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. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the batter that puffs and sets around the sausages.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps it rise and set as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps the batter bake into a tender, custardy base.
Sausages
Provide the main filling, releasing fat that helps the batter brown and crisp.

The step that matters

Preheat the oven and keep the batter in a cool place before baking. A hot oven creates steam quickly, helping the batter rise sharply. Batter that is well mixed but kept cool rests without starting to set early, so it expands evenly in the pan.

“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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