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Potato Pasty Pan

A pan of meat and mashed potatoes baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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.

Assemble and bake

  1. Peel and mash the potatoes, then form a crust at least 3 inches thick over the meat.

  2. Bake until the potatoes are nicely browned and flavored like the meat.

Serve

  1. 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
Forms the filling and releases flavor into the gravy and the potato crust below.
Potatoes
Form the crust that sets and browns in the oven while absorbing savory meat flavor.
Gravy
Adds moisture so the meat stays juicy and the filling does not dry out while baking.

The step that matters

Forming the potato crust. The crust must be thick enough, at least 3 inches, to insulate the meat so it cooks through while the top browns. A thin layer can dry out or burn before the filling is hot.

“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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