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To Make Meat and Potato Pudding

A baked pudding made with mashed potatoes, milk, eggs, and cooked meat, topped with ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Make Meat and Potato Pudding

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. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes and mix with milk and eggs to form a thick batter.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a dish, layer chopped and seasoned meat, then add a layer of batter; repeat layers, finishing with batter on top.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is light brown.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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

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

  3. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + meattop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 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
Mashed into a thick base that gives the pudding its body and soft texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, holding the layers together.
Milk
Loosens the mashed potato into a spreadable batter and adds moisture.
Cooked meat
Forms the savoury filling layers beneath the potato batter.

The step that matters

Baking until the top is light brown. The eggs in the batter need enough oven heat to set fully, while the top browns through Maillard reactions. Stopping too early leaves the pudding soft and wet inside.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, meat, ketchup, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, meat, ketchup, 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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