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Potato Puffs

A stuffed pastry of mashed potatoes and seasoned roast meat, fried and served with a cheese sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Potato Puffs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat

  1. Remove gristle from the cold roast meat.

  2. Cut the meat small.

  3. Season the meat with pepper, salt, and pickles if desired.

Make the potato dough

  1. Boil the potatoes.

  2. Mash the potatoes.

  3. Mix the mashed potatoes with the egg to form a paste.

  4. Roll out the potato paste on a floured surface.

  5. Cut the paste into circles using a saucer.

Fill and fry

  1. Place seasoned meat on one half of each circle.

  2. Fold the other half over the meat.

  3. Pinch the edges to seal.

  4. Fry the puffs in hot oil until golden brown.

Make the cheese paste

  1. Combine the cheese, butter, water, and a little salt in a saucepan.

  2. Boil gently.

  3. Gradually add flour until the mixture thickens.

  4. Let it dry until it resembles thick new butter.

  5. Stir in 2 or 3 eggs and a little cayenne pepper.

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. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

Potatoes
Mashed and mixed with egg, they form the pliable pastry that encloses the filling.
Egg
Binds the mashed potato into a cohesive paste that can be rolled and sealed.
Cheese
Melts into the butter and water base, giving the cheese paste its rich flavour and body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the cheese paste, helping it turn smooth and spreadable.
Flour
Thickens the cheese mixture as it is added to the boiling liquid.
Cold roast meat
Forms the savoury filling enclosed within the potato pastry.

The step that matters

Frying the puffs in hot oil. Oil that is too cool lets the potato pastry soak up grease before it sets, while sealed edges that are not pinched well can open and leak filling. Hot oil sets the crust quickly and browns it.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, egg, flour, cheese, butter):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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