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A Nice Breakfast Dish

A casserole of cold beef or lamb with mashed potatoes, cream, butter, egg, and seasonings, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 143 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Nice Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Mince the cold beef or lamb.

  2. If using beef, add a pinch of powdered cloves; if lamb, add a pinch of summer savory.

  3. Season with a little pepper and salt, then place in a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mash the potatoes and mix with cream, butter, and a little salt.

  2. Spread the potato mixture over the meat.

  3. Beat the egg with cream or milk and spread it over the potatoes.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until warmed through and the potatoes are 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. Clove + summer savorytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Beef + lambtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  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. Lamb + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together520 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold beef or lamb
Forms the savory meat base of the casserole.
Mashed potatoes
Forms the topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the mashed potato topping.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the potato topping.
Egg
Beaten with cream or milk, it sets to bind the top layer.

The step that matters

Beating the egg with cream or milk over the potatoes. The egg proteins coagulate when heated, setting the topping into a cohesive layer, while the dairy keeps it moist. Spreading the mixture evenly ensures consistent setting and browning across the surface.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, summer savory, lamb, potato, cream, butter, egg):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, summer savory, lamb, potato, cream, butter, 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.

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