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A Nice Dish From Cold Beef, with Mashed Potatoes

A casserole of sliced cold beef topped with mashed potatoes, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

A Nice Dish From Cold Beef, with Mashed Potatoes

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

  1. Mash the potatoes with hot milk, egg yolk, butter, and salt.

  2. Slice the cold beef and place it in a pie dish.

  3. Season the beef with pepper, salt, and add a little beef gravy.

  4. Cover the beef with the mashed potatoes, smoothing it out.

  5. Score the potato crust into squares with a knife.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until browned on all sides.

  2. Serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

  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

Potatoes
Form a soft mashed topping that bakes into a browned crust.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps the mashed potato set firm and hold its shape.
Butter
Adds fat for richer flavour and a softer, smoother mash.
Cold beef
Forms the savoury meat filling beneath the potato layer.
Beef gravy
Adds moisture and meaty flavour to the beef filling.

The step that matters

Bake until browned on all sides. The potato topping browns through Maillard reactions at the surface, which need enough heat and time. Too little baking leaves it pale and the filling underheated.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, milk, egg, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, milk, egg, butter. 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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