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Baked Potato Pudding

A baked pudding of mashed potatoes, suet, cheese, and minced meat, served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Baked Potato Pudding

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 filling

  1. Mince and season the meat.

  2. If using uncooked meat, stew it until tender.

Make the potato cakes

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes.

  2. Add the suet and cheese to the mashed potatoes, then mix in the milk.

  3. Form the mixture into two cakes.

  4. Melt a little block suet in a pan until hot, then fry the cakes on one side.

Assemble and bake

  1. Scoop a hole in the bottom of one cake and fill it with the minced meat.

  2. Place the second cake on top, then bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until thoroughly hot.

  3. Serve surrounded by thick 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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

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

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the cakes, giving a soft, starchy body when mashed.
Beef or mutton
Provides the savoury meat filling sealed inside the potato cakes.
Suet
Adds richness and fat, keeping the mashed potato moist and tender.
Milk
Adds moisture so the mashed potato becomes soft and easy to shape.
Cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the cake brown when baked.

The step that matters

Frying the cakes on one side. Searing the outside before filling and baking builds a browned, firmer crust that holds the shape of the cake and adds flavour.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, milk, cheese, pepper):

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, milk, cheese, 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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