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Potato Pasty Pan

A baked dish of seasoned meat covered with mashed potatoes, cooked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Meat and potato work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Potato Pasty Pan

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Trim and season the meat, then pour a small quantity of gravy over it.

  3. Peel and mash the potatoes, forming a crust at least 3 inches thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the meat in a baking dish and cover it with the mashed potatoes.

  2. Bake until the potatoes are browned and the meat is cooked through, about 45 minutes.

  3. Serve with a neatly-folded napkin pinned around the dish.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the savory filling, cooked through in the oven under the potato crust.
Potatoes
Form the mashed crust that holds in moisture and browns on top in the oven.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoriness to the meat so it stays juicy while baking.

The step that matters

Forming the potato crust. The mashed potato must be thick enough to insulate the meat, so it cooks through without drying out, and it needs to reach an even golden brown on top.

“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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