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Mashed Potatoes

A dish of mashed potatoes topped with a roasted sheep's head, seasoned with herbs and sprinkled with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Mashed Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the sheep's head and place it in a stewpan.

  2. Add the onions, turnip, carrot, leek, Scotch barley, salt, sugar, pepper, and herbs.

  3. Pour in 2 quarts of water and stir the barley frequently while skimming.

  4. Simmer for 2.5 hours.

  5. Remove the head and skin the tongue.

Make the potato base

  1. Mash the potatoes with a wooden spoon.

  2. Mix in the dripping and boiling milk.

  3. Place the mashed potatoes on a flat dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Put the head on top of the mashed potatoes.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

  3. Dot with small pieces of dripping.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  5. Serve in the same dish, ensuring both the potatoes and head are browned.

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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Leek + barleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together142 recipes

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

  4. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep's head
Forms the main meat, cooked until tender in the simmering broth.
Potatoes
Form the mashed base that holds the head and browns in the oven.
Dripping
Adds fat and richness to the mashed potatoes and browns the top.
Scotch barley
Thickens the broth and adds body as it cooks and releases starch.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potatoes.

The step that matters

Browning the head and potatoes. Browning depends on surface dryness and direct oven heat. Dotting with dripping and sprinkling with crumbs helps the surface brown through Maillard reactions, while moisture left on the surface can steam it pale.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (turnip, carrot, leek, barley, sugar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against turnip, carrot, leek, barley, sugar, pepper, parsley. 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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