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Stuffed Potatoes

Beef and mushroom ketchup stuffed potatoes baked in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Stuffed Potatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Wash and peel the potatoes thinly, cutting off about an inch from the smaller end.

  2. With a strong teaspoon, scrape out the center of each potato, leaving a shell about ⅓ inch thick.

  3. Place the potato shells in cold water to keep them white.

Fill and seal

  1. Finely chop the steak and mix it with salt, pepper, mushroom ketchup, and cayenne.

  2. Dry the potato shells with a towel and pack the meat mixture firmly into them.

  3. Beat the egg until light and coat the stuffed potatoes and their tops with it.

  4. Press the tops back onto the stuffed potatoes.

Cook

  1. Melt the butter in a shallow saucepan until it smokes, then carefully place the potatoes in the hot butter.

  2. Cover the saucepan and cook the potatoes slowly for one hour, turning them occasionally to brown evenly.

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 + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  5. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Hold the filling and form the crisp, browned shell as they cook in butter.
Beef steak
Provides the savory meat filling that is packed into the potato shells.
Egg
Beaten and brushed on the outside, it helps the coating set and brown.
Butter
Fat that cooks the potatoes slowly and helps them brown evenly.

The step that matters

Cooking the potatoes slowly in butter. Cooking gently under a cover lets the potatoes cook through while the surface browns. Turning them occasionally gives even colour and keeps the butter from scorching.

Swap the potato

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, mushroom, ketchup, pepper, butter, egg. 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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