Name: Meat Pie
Ingredients: meat, cut into small bits; water, enough to cover the meat; rich pie crust; salt, to taste; pepper, to taste; onion, finely chopped (optional); boiled potatoes, sliced; butter, in small bits; flour, for thickening

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Meat Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the meat in enough water to cover it until tender.
Line the sides of a pudding dish with the pie crust.
Layer the stewed meat in the dish, seasoning with salt, pepper, and onion.
Add a layer of sliced boiled potatoes and bits of butter.
Repeat layers until the dish is full.
Pour the gravy from the stewed meat over the layers, thickened with flour.
Cover with a thick crust, leaving a slit in the middle.
If the pie gets dry, add more gravy or a little hot water.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, potato, butter, flour):

Chivefits better
Shallotfits about as well
Asparagusfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, potato, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.