Skip to main content
Main

Meat Roly Poly

A steamed roll of dough filled with minced mutton, veal, or chicken, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Meat Roly Poly

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Add milk and mix until a dough forms.

  3. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick.

Fill and steam

  1. Spread minced meat on the dough and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Roll the dough over the meat to enclose it.

  3. Place the rolled dough on a buttered plate.

  4. Steam for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve slices with 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

Flour
Forms the dough structure that encloses the filling as it steams.
Baking powder
Releases gas during steaming, lightening the dough so it rises and stays tender.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a pliable dough, adding moisture and softness.
Minced mutton, veal, or chicken
Provides the rich, savoury filling that is cooked through by steam.

The step that matters

Enclosing the filling. If the dough is rolled loosely or has gaps, meat juices can leak out and the roll may steam unevenly. A tight seal keeps the filling moist and the dough cooked through.

“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.

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes