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Sausages Ail Gastronome

Sausages topped with a cheese and mashed potato mixture, baked and served with demi-glace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and swiss cheese work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 61 recipes. Both carry methyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells apple, fatty. The science ↓

Sausages Ail Gastronome

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sausages

  1. Prick the sausages with a fork.

  2. Place them in a tin baking dish and cook for 6 minutes in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mix the mashed potatoes, raw eggs, and cheese together.

  2. Spread the potato mixture in a baking dish and place the sausages on top.

  3. Cook for another 6 minutes in the oven.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with demi-glace poured over.

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. Potato + swiss cheesetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together61 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (apple, fatty).

  2. Egg + swiss cheesetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  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

Lean sausages
Provide the main protein and savoury flavour that the dish is built around.
Mashed potatoes
Form the soft base layer that holds the sausages and cushions their heat.
Raw eggs
Bind the potato and cheese mixture so it holds together when baked.
Grated parmesan or swiss cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Demi-glace
Adds rich, concentrated meaty flavour and moisture when poured over at the end.

The step that matters

Baking the sausages before adding the potato layer. The sausages are only cooked for a short initial time before the potato mixture goes on. Pricking them lets fat and steam escape so they do not swell or burst, and the second bake makes sure they are heated through.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Welsh onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, swiss cheese. 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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