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Meat Rolly-poly

A rolled meat mixture wrapped in pie crust, baked and served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Rolly-poly

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

  1. Chop the remains of a roast or steak finely.

  2. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, nutmeg, and finely chopped onion.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make a pie crust and roll it thin.

  2. Spread the meat mixture thickly on the crust.

  3. Roll it up and bake at 400°F (200°C) for half an hour.

Serve

  1. Serve with brown sauce or tomato sauce.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Remains of a roast or steak
Provides the cooked meat filling and its savory flavor.
Pie crust
Wraps the filling and bakes into a crisp, golden outer layer.
Small onion
Adds moisture and savory sweetness to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Roll the pie crust thin. A thin crust bakes crisp and golden and keeps the filling from being doughy. A thick crust stays pale and soggy inside, and it takes longer to cook through.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg. 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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