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Sallie Mundee's Way Op Deessing Cold Meat

Minced cold beef or mutton seasoned with onion and gravy, topped with mashed potato and cream, then browned in the oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sallie Mundee's Way Op Deessing Cold Meat

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).

Assemble

  1. In a bowl, combine minced beef or mutton, onion, pepper, salt, and gravy.

  2. Spoon the mixture into scallop shells or small cups, filling them three-quarters full.

  3. Mix mashed potatoes with cream and top the meat mixture with it.

  4. Place a bit of butter on top and brown in the oven.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Minced beef or mutton
Provides the savory meat base that forms the body of the dish.
Mashed potatoes
Forms the creamy topping that covers and seals the meat mixture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed potato topping.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the potato topping brown in the oven.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savory flavor to the meat mixture.

The step that matters

Browning the potato topping. Butter on the surface helps the potatoes brown through Maillard reactions, which need dry, hot surface conditions. Topping that stays pale or soggy means the surface was too wet or the oven was not hot enough.

“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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