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Olive Royals

A pastry made from boiled potato paste filled with seasoned cold roasted meat, fried in fresh dripping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Olive Royals

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then let them cool.

  2. Rub the cooled potatoes smooth with flour and butter to form a paste.

  3. Knead the mixture until well combined, then roll it out to ¼ inch thick.

  4. Cut the rolled paste into rounds.

Fill and fold

  1. Place small bits of seasoned cold roasted meat on one side of each round, adding a small bit of butter on top.

  2. Wet the edges of the paste, fold over to form half-circles, and seal the edges.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the half-circles in boiling fresh dripping until light brown.

  2. Drain on the back of a sieve and serve with or without gravy.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + meattop 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).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Potatoes
Form the soft, starchy base of the paste that holds the turnover together.
Flour
Binds the mashed potato into a workable dough that holds its shape when folded.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the paste and to the filling.
Roasted meat
Provides the savoury filling inside the turnover.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. Wetting and pressing the edges together creates a firm seal. If the seal is weak, the filling can leak out into the hot fat during frying.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, meat, pepper. 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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