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Sausage Potatoes

A baked dish of sausages and mashed potatoes, seasoned with salt, pepper, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Sausage Potatoes

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 and steam them in a pint of boiling water for about 20 minutes.

Make the potato

  1. Mash the warm potatoes and beat with a wooden spoon until very light, adding enough milk to moisten them.

Assemble and bake

  1. Take a spoonful of the potato, place a piece of sausage on it, and cover with more potato, leaving it rough.

  2. Place in a greased baking tin and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes until nicely browned.

  3. Garnish each with a sprig of parsley.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  5. Milk + peppertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26,984 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Sausages
Provide the savoury filling and meaty flavour at the centre of each portion.
Potatoes
Form the soft, light coating that holds the sausage and browns in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the mashed potato so it beats light and stays tender when baked.

The step that matters

Beating the mashed potato until very light. Beating cooked potato with milk incorporates air and makes it smooth and fluffy. Overworking or leaving it lumpy and dense results in a heavy coating that bakes less evenly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, pepper):

  1. Dillfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Rosemaryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, pepper. 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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