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Cottage Pie

A baked dish of mashed potatoes over meat and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cottage Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter a baking dish.

Assemble

  1. Spread a layer of mashed potatoes on the bottom.

  2. Add a thick layer of meat pieces.

  3. Moisten the meat with gravy.

  4. Cover with a thin layer of mashed potatoes.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the potatoes are browned.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the base and top layers, and brown on the surface in the oven.
Meat
Provides the savory filling that forms the body of the pie.
Gravy
Adds moisture to the meat so the filling stays juicy while baking.

The step that matters

Moistening the meat with gravy. Meat dries out in the oven, and gravy keeps the filling moist. Too little leaves a dry, crumbly layer, while too much makes the pie soggy.

“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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