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Sally's Ladies Casserole

A casserole of ground beef, pork, onions, tomato soup, cream cheese, mushrooms, noodles, and cornflakes, baked with almonds.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Sally's Ladies Casserole

Oven350°F
Time30 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the meat sauce

  1. Cook beef and pork and onions in 2 tbsp butter until golden brown.

  2. Add tomato soup, crumbled cream cheese, sugar, Worcestershire, salt and pepper.

  3. Simmer 5 to 10 minutes until thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Have noodles ready, cooked, and in a large greased casserole.

  2. Pour meat mixture over noodles.

  3. Brown mushrooms in 1 tbsp butter and spread on top.

  4. Sprinkle crushed cornflakes on top.

  5. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes.

  6. Five or ten minutes before serving, sprinkle chopped almonds over the top and let them toast slightly.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  5. Cream cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,747 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground beef
Provides the savory, browned meat base of the sauce.
Tomato soup
Supplies liquid and acidity that form the thick, saucy layer.
Cream cheese
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the meat mixture.
Wide noodles
Form the starchy base layer that soaks up the sauce.
Cornflakes
Crushed flakes form a crisp, browned topping in the oven.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the top layer when browned in butter.

The step that matters

Simmer until thick before assembling. If the meat sauce is still thin, it will soak into the noodles and make the casserole soggy. Simmering reduces the liquid so the sauce holds its body while baking.

Flavor stand-ins for the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, tomato, cream cheese, butter, sugar):

  1. Beansbetter flavor fit
  2. Peanutbetter flavor fit
  3. Sesamebetter flavor fit
  4. Almondthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, tomato, cream cheese, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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