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Old Meat Cookery

Layered casserole of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Old Meat Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Assemble

  1. Butter the sides of a deep dish and spread mashed potatoes over the bottom.

  2. Place a layer of thinly sliced beef on top, seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little onion and herbs.

  3. Add another layer of mashed potatoes and repeat with beef and seasoning.

  4. Pour the gravy or sauce over the top and cover with another layer of mashed potatoes.

Bake

  1. Bake until heated through and 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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef
Provides the meat filling, which is already cooked and only needs heating through.
Mashed potatoes
Forms the layers that hold the filling and brown on top in the oven.
Gravy or sauce
Adds moisture so the layers stay moist rather than drying out while baking.
Onion
Adds savory flavour to the beef layers.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, onion, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, onion, sauce. 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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