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Sallie Munder's Way of Dressing Cold Meat

A baked dish of minced beef or mutton mixed with onions, pepper, salt, gravy, topped with mashed potatoes and butter.

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 Munder's Way of Dressing 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 the filling

  1. Combine minced beef or mutton with chopped onions, pepper, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Add a little gravy to moisten the mixture.

  3. Spoon the mixture into scallop shells or small cups, filling them three parts full.

Top and bake

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

  2. Top with mashed potatoes mixed with a little cream.

  3. Place a small piece of butter on top of the potatoes.

  4. Bake in the oven until browned.

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

Beef or mutton
Provides the savoury meat base that forms the body of the filling.
Onions
Add moisture and a sweet, aromatic flavour as they soften in the filling.
Gravy
Moistens the meat mixture so it stays tender rather than dry.
Potatoes
Form a soft topping that sets and browns in the oven.
Cream
Enriches the mashed potato, adding richness and a smoother texture.
Butter
Melts over the potato topping, adding fat that promotes browning.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. The oven heat must brown the potato topping while the meat stays moist. Mashed potato browns through the Maillard reaction at high dry heat, so the topping should be checked for colour rather than judged by time alone, to avoid drying out the filling.

“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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