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Cold Meat Rolls

A baked or fried roll made from mashed potatoes and chopped cooked meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Cold Meat Rolls

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. Chop the cooked meat and onion very finely. Season with pepper and salt.

Make the dough

  1. Mash the potatoes smoothly and add 2 teaspoons of melted butter. Whisk over heat to dry.

  2. On a table, combine the potato mixture with enough flour to form a paste about ¼ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the paste into 6-inch squares. Place a spoonful of the chopped meat on each square.

  2. Wet the edges, fold the paste over the meat, and press the ends down.

  3. Place the rolls on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400°F (200°C) until light brown, or fry in hot fat.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Cooked meat
Provides the savoury filling that is wrapped inside the potato paste.
Potatoes
Form the main body of the paste, giving a soft, moist texture when mashed.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the mashed potato mixture.
Flour
Binds the mashed potato into a workable paste that holds its shape.

The step that matters

Drying the potato mixture. Whisking the mashed potato over heat drives off surplus moisture. A drier mash binds with less flour and keeps the paste from becoming sticky or soggy when shaped and baked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, potato, butter, flour, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, butter, flour, pepper. 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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