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Cold Meat and Scrap Cookery

A baked casserole of sliced potatoes layered with cooked meat and gravy, finished with a browned top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cold Meat and Scrap Cookery

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a pie dish.

Assemble

  1. Slice the potatoes and layer them at the bottom, about ½ to 1 inch thick.

  2. Chop the cooked meat finely and mix it with stock or gravy.

  3. Place the meat in the center of the potato layer, leaving space around it.

  4. Add the remaining potatoes on top, starting from the sides to prevent gravy from boiling out.

  5. Rough the surface with a fork for better browning.

  6. Optionally, brush with melted dripping or coat with beaten egg before baking.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until hot and brown.

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

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

  2. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes
  3. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

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

  4. Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,073 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,978 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and crisp and brown on the surface as they bake.
Cooked meat
Provides the savoury filling that the potato layers enclose.
Stock or gravy
Adds moisture so the meat and potatoes stay juicy rather than drying out in the oven.
Melted dripping or beaten egg
Promotes browning and a glossy surface on the top layer.

The step that matters

Starting the top layer from the sides. Placing the potatoes around the edges first helps seal the meat and gravy in the centre, so the liquid does not boil out and escape during baking.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, 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.

More meat and potato casserole recipes

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