Name: To Make a Sea Pie
Ingredients: uncooked meat, sliced; onions, peeled and sliced; swedes or turnips, peeled and sliced; potatoes, peeled; flour; dripping, lard, butter, or suet; water

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 a Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

In a saucepan, combine the sliced meat, onions, swedes or turnips, and enough water to stew.
Place a steamer or plate on top of the meat mixture.
Arrange the peeled potatoes on the plate.
Make a paste with flour, dripping, lard, butter, or suet, and a little water, then cover the potatoes with it.
Allow the steam from the meat to cook the potatoes.
Once everything is cooked, turn it out of the saucepan and serve hot.

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).
Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together7,585 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,874 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Turnip + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 turnip

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

Chivefits better
Leekfits better
Shallotfits better
Turnipthe original

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