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Lunch Dish

A baked casserole of sliced potatoes, onions, cold roast meat, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Lunch Dish

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Slice the potatoes thinly.

  2. Chop the onion finely.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the potatoes, onion, and cold roast meat in a baking dish, finishing with a layer of potatoes on top.

  2. Fill the dish with hot water.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 hours.

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

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

  3. Onion + meattop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 casserole, cooking down into a soft, starchy layer.
Cold roast meat
Provides the meat element, flavouring the layers as it bakes.
Onion
Adds aromatic flavour that mellows during the long, slow bake.
Brown gravy
Seasons the dish and adds savoury flavour and moisture.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, meat. 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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