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Meat Sanders

A baked pastry of mashed potato dough filled with seasoned meat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Sanders

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.

Make the pastry

  1. Mash the cold boiled potatoes thoroughly.

  2. Add salt, butter, and enough flour to make a paste that can be rolled out.

  3. Roll out the paste evenly and cut it into squares, similar in size to those for sausage rolls.

Fill and bake

  1. Place some chopped and seasoned meat in the center of each square.

  2. Fold the squares over, glaze with egg white, and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until nicely browned.

  3. Serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the dough, giving it a soft, moist body that can be rolled.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the paste and contributes to a tender texture.
Egg white
Glazes the surface so the pastry browns and takes on a glossy finish.
Flour
Gives the mashed potato enough structure to form a paste that holds its shape when rolled.

The step that matters

Mashing and mixing the paste. Potatoes must be mashed thoroughly and combined with just enough flour; lumps or too much flour make the paste stiff, uneven, or tough, so it may crack or fail to roll out evenly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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