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A Nice Dish for Dinner or Supper

A casserole of seasoned beef and mashed potatoes baked with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

A Nice Dish for Dinner or Supper

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 cold beef or veal finely and season with salt and pepper.

Assemble

  1. In a shallow baking dish, layer the seasoned meat and hot mashed potatoes alternately until the dish is full.

  2. Smooth the top of the potatoes and make small holes in it.

  3. Place bits of butter in the holes.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is nicely browned.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef or veal
Provides the savoury meat filling that forms the main body of the casserole.
Hot mashed potatoes
Forms the soft layers and topping that becomes golden and browned in the oven.
Butter
Melts into the holes in the potato topping, adding moisture and richness and helping it brown.

The step that matters

Smooth the top and make holes for the butter. Smoothing the potato top lets it brown evenly, and the holes give the melting butter places to sit so it soaks in rather than pooling and running off.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Tomatofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, 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.

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