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Potato Beef

A layered casserole of mashed potatoes, lean beef, milk, eggs, and butter 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 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potato mash

  1. Boil the Irish potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes until smooth, mixing in milk and beaten eggs.

Layer and bake

  1. Spread a layer of the potato mixture in a pie pan.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced lean beef.

  3. Repeat layers until the pan is full, finishing with potatoes on top.

  4. Dot the top layer with bits of butter.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) 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

Irish potatoes
Provide the bulk and starch that give the mash its body.
Eggs
Bind the mash and set when baked, holding the layers together.
Milk
Moistens the mash and makes it smooth and soft.
Lean beef
Adds savory meaty flavor and substance between the potato layers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the top brown and moisten as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until heated through. Thinly sliced lean beef cooks quickly, but it must reach a safe internal temperature throughout the layers. Baking low and slow heats the centre evenly, while the egg-set potato layers firm up without drying out.

“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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