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Turnovers of Cold Meat

A pastry turnover filled with seasoned cold meat and optional onion, served fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Turnovers of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut cold meat into small pieces and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Add finely-chopped onion if desired.

  3. Grate cold potatoes and mix with beaten egg.

Make and fill the dough

  1. Gradually add flour to form a dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to a thickness suitable for pies.

  3. Place seasoned meat on a portion of the dough, fold edges, and pinch to seal.

Fry

  1. Fry the turnovers on both sides until golden brown.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold meat
Forms the main filling and provides the savoury flavour of the turnovers.
Cold potatoes
Add body and moisture to the filling and help bind it.
Egg
Binds the grated potato and helps hold the mixture together.
Flour
Forms the dough that encloses the filling and gives the turnovers their structure.

The step that matters

Pinch the edges to seal. If the edges are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak out during frying and the turnover may open or absorb excess oil.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, potato, egg, flour):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, potato, egg, flour. 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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