Name: Roast Beef Pie
Ingredients: roast beef or beef steak, thinly sliced; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter; cold potatoes, diced; cold gravy (optional); biscuit dough (for crust)

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 ↓

Roast Beef Pie

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Line a deep dish with rolled biscuit dough, about ¼ inch thick.

Assemble the pie

Layer thin slices of roast beef in the dish.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and add a small bit of butter.
Add a few diced cold potatoes and some cold gravy if available.
Repeat layering until the dish is filled.
Cover with more biscuit dough, leaving a slit in the center.

Bake

Bake for 30 minutes.

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.

Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together137 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef: Forms the savoury filling that is the main body of the pie.
Cold potatoes: Add bulk and soft body to the filling between the beef layers.
Biscuit dough: Forms the crust that encloses the filling and bakes golden.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Cold gravy: Adds moisture to the layers so the filling does not dry out while baking.