Name: A Nice Way of Cooking Cold Meats
Ingredients: cold cooked meat; coarse sea salt; black pepper; onion; tomato ketchup; mashed potatoes; milk; butter

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Nice Way of Cooking Cold Meats

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Chop the cold cooked meat finely.
Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and either onion or tomato ketchup.

Assemble

Fill a bread pan two-thirds full with the meat mixture.
Top with salted mashed potatoes mixed with milk.
Dot the top with bits of butter.

Bake

Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 to 20 minutes.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,633 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

Cold cooked meat: Forms the main filling and provides the savoury base of the casserole.
Mashed potatoes: Forms a soft topping that browns in the oven and keeps the meat moist below.
Butter: Melts over the potato topping, adding richness and helping it brown.
Milk: Loosens the mashed potatoes so they spread easily and stay soft when baked.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, onion, ketchup, potato, milk, butter):

Capsicumfits better
Chivefits about as well
Carrotfits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, onion, ketchup, potato, milk, 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.