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Potato Turnovers

A fried pastry filled with roast meat and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and potato work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Potato Turnovers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling and dough

  1. Chop the roast meat finely and season well.

  2. Mix the mashed potatoes with 1-2 raw eggs until it forms a spreadable paste.

  3. Sprinkle flour on a surface and cut out round cakes from the potato mixture.

Assemble and fry

  1. Place a tablespoon of the meat on one cake, cover with another cake, and press the edges together.

  2. Fry in hot cooking oil until golden brown.

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. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Meat + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the dough-like body of the turnover that holds the filling.
Raw eggs
Bind the potatoes into a spreadable paste that holds its shape.
Flour
Dusts the surface so the potato cakes can be cut without sticking.
Slices of roast meat
Provide the savory filling, chopped finely and well seasoned.

The step that matters

Pressing the edges together. If the edges are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak out into the hot oil and the turnovers may break apart while frying.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, egg, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, egg, flour. 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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