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Bread

Cold Meat Turnovers

A pastry turnover filled with finely chopped cold meat seasoned with pepper, salt, catsup, and sweet herbs, fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Meat and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,777 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cold Meat Turnovers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roll out the dough very thin.

Fill and fold

  1. Place chopped cold meat in the center, season with pepper, coarse sea salt, catsup, and sweet herbs.

  2. Fold the dough over to form small turnovers.

Fry

  1. Fry in lard until the dough is cooked through.

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 + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dough
Forms the thin outer wrapper that encloses the filling and crisps when fried.
Cold meat
Provides the main filling, giving savory flavor and substance to each turnover.
Lard
Frying fat that transfers heat to the dough and browns its surface.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity that season the meat filling.

The step that matters

Fry in lard until the dough is cooked through. Frying at too low a temperature lets the turnovers absorb excess fat and turn greasy, while frying too hot browns the outside before the dough inside cooks. Steady, moderate heat cooks the dough through and gives a crisp exterior.

“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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