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Turnovers of Cold Meat

Turnovers made with seasoned cold meat, grated potatoes, egg, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Turnovers of Cold Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the cold meat with pepper, salt, and onion if desired.

  2. Grate the cold potatoes and mix with the beaten egg.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Add enough flour to form a dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to a thickness suitable for pies.

  3. Place a portion of the seasoned meat on the dough.

  4. Fold the edges of the dough over the meat and pinch to seal.

Fry

  1. Fry the turnovers on both sides 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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold potatoes
Grated potato with egg binds the mixture and adds moisture and body.
Egg
Binds the grated potato and helps hold the mixture together.
Flour
Forms the dough that encloses the filling and gives structure to the pastry.
Cold meat
Forms the savoury filling of the turnovers.

The step that matters

Pinch the edges to seal. If the edges are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak out during frying and the turnovers can open. A tight seal keeps the moisture and filling inside as the dough cooks.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, potato, egg, flour):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, potato, 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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