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Cold Beef with Mashed Potatoes

A casserole of sliced cold beef topped with mashed potatoes, eschalot, pepper, and gravy, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cold Beef with Mashed Potatoes

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 the potatoes

  1. Peel and boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes with hot milk, egg yolk, butter, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Slice the cold beef and layer it in a pie dish.

  2. Add sliced eschalot, pepper, and beef gravy on top of the beef.

  3. Spread the mashed potatoes over the beef, creating a thick crust.

  4. Score the potato crust into squares with a knife.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until browned and heated 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Potato + shallottop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together272 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the mashed topping that becomes a thick, soft crust over the beef.
Egg yolk
Enriches the mashed potatoes, adding richness and helping the topping brown well.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the mashed potatoes, keeping them smooth and rich.
Hot milk
Adds moisture to the mash, making it smooth and easy to spread.
Cold beef
Forms the main filling layer, which is heated through during baking.

The step that matters

Spread the mashed potatoes over the beef, creating a thick crust.. The mash must cover the beef fully so no meat is exposed. Its starch and fat then brown in the oven while the filling heats through.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, egg, butter, beef, 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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