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Olive Royals

A pastry made from potato paste filled with cold roasted meat, seasoned with pepper and salt, then fried.

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

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Rub the potatoes smooth with the flour and butter until it forms a paste.

  3. Roll out the paste to about ¼ inch thick and cut into rounds.

Fill and seal

  1. Place a small amount of cold roasted meat on one side of each round, season with pepper and salt, and add a small bit of butter.

  2. Wet the edges of the paste and fold it over to form a half circle, sealing the edges.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the filled pastries in boiling fresh dripping until they are light brown.

  2. Drain them on the back of a sieve placed before the fire.

  3. 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
Provide the starchy base that becomes a soft, pliable paste for the pockets.
Flour
Binds the mashed potato into a dough that holds its shape when rolled and folded.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the dough, and melts into the filling for flavour.
Cold roasted meat
Forms the savoury filling that gives each pocket its main flavour.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. Wet the edges well and press them firmly together. Any gap lets filling leak out and fat splatter during frying, so the pockets can open or cook unevenly.

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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