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Potato Beef

A layered casserole of mashed potatoes and thin beef slices baked until heated through.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Potato Beef

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Boil potatoes until fully cooked, then peel and mash them smoothly.

  2. Gradually mix in some milk and beaten eggs into the mashed potatoes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a white pudding dish with butter or drippings.

  2. Layer the mashed potatoes in the dish, then add a layer of thin beef slices.

  3. Repeat the layers of mashed potatoes and beef until the dish is full, heaping the potatoes in the center.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until heated through.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Milk + beeftop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the casserole and give it a soft, creamy body when mashed.
Eggs
Bind the mashed potatoes so the layers hold together and set when baked.
Milk
Loosens the mashed potatoes to a spreadable, moist texture.
Beef
Provides the savoury meat layers that give the casserole its main flavour.

The step that matters

Layering and filling the dish. Packing the layers evenly and heaping the potatoes in the center helps the casserole heat through evenly and keeps the beef from drying out at the edges.

“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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