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To Make Pasties

A pastry filled with meat, onion, and optional potato, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Make Pasties

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 the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour and lard (or suet) with enough cold water to form a dough.

Fill and shape

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Roll out the dough and place the meat in the center.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and add the chopped onion.

  4. If desired, add the sliced potato.

  5. Fold the dough over to form a turnover and seal the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  5. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Lard or suet
Adds fat that makes the pastry tender and flaky.
Meat
Provides the main savoury filling that cooks through inside the pastry.
Onion
Adds moisture and aroma as it softens inside the filling.
Potato
Adds starch and body to the filling when included.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. A tight seal keeps juices and steam inside the pastry during baking. A weak seal lets the filling leak out and the pastry dry or burn at the seam.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Okrafits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, meat, pepper, onion. 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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