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Sausage Polls

Sausage Polls are pastry squares filled with boiled sausage, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sausage Polls

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the sausages for 2 minutes.

  2. Let them cool.

  3. Remove the skin.

  4. Cut each sausage in half.

Make the paste

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

  2. Cut in the lard or butter into small pieces.

  3. Make a light paste with a little cold water.

  4. Roll it out thinly on a floured board. Fold the paste in thirds. Turn it. Roll it out again. Repeat this twice more. Roll it out thinly.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut into 5-inch squares.

  2. Place half a sausage on each square. Wet the edges. Fold the paste over. Seal the join at the top. Mark with the back of a knife.

  3. Place on a greased baking sheet. Brush with milk or egg.

  4. Bake in a hot oven (400°F) for about 30 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the paste structure that holds the filling and bakes up crisp and flaky.
Lard
Fat cut into the flour, keeping the paste tender and flaky as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the paste, helping it brown and turn flaky.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the paste rises and becomes light.
Sausages
Provide the savoury filling that is wrapped inside the paste.

The step that matters

Keep the fat in small pieces and fold the paste in layers. Cold fat pieces melt in the hot oven and leave steam pockets between layers, which makes the paste flaky. If the fat is worked in too finely or the paste warms up, the layers blend and the puffs turn dense.

“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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