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Baked Meat, Rice and Potatoes

A baked dish of meat, rice, and potatoes cooked together in a single tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 851 recipes. Both carry 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline, which smells popcorn, roasted. The science ↓

Baked Meat, Rice and Potatoes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and cook the rice

  1. Wash the rice and place it in a Yorkshire pudding tin with 2 cups of hot water and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the rice absorbs nearly all the water.

Add the potatoes and meat

  1. Prepare the potatoes by halving them lengthwise and placing them on top of the rice.

  2. Sprinkle the potatoes with salt, pepper, and small pieces of fat or dripping.

  3. Season the meat with salt and pepper, place it on a trivet in the tin, and bake until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, transfer the meat to a hot dish and serve the rice and potatoes in vegetable dishes.

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. Rice + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together851 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

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

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

  5. Beef + ricetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,265 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the main protein and rich flavour as it cooks and renders its juices onto the dish.
Rice
Absorbs the cooking water and forms the base layer that softens into a tender bed.
Potatoes
Become tender and starchy in the oven, absorbing fat and juices from the tin.
Pieces of fat
Add richness and moisture, and help the potatoes brown and taste savoury as they cook.

The step that matters

Cooking the rice until it absorbs nearly all the water. Rice must absorb the water gradually in the oven. If it is too wet the base turns soggy, and if it dries out too early it can scorch before the meat and potatoes are done.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, rice, 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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