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Shepherd's Pie II

"This is my version of my Mother's wonderful comfort food recipe. Great on a winters' day."

This recipe’s ingredient list has no crust or pastry, so it bakes more like a fruit dish than a pastry pie.

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 9,019 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

The recipe

1 - 4 quart casserole

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Potato + oniontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,019 recipes

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

  2. Potato + corntop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together938 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Onion + beeftop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

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

  5. Potato + beeftop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,051 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, butter, milk, onion, beef, peas, corn):

  1. Garlicbetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Pepperbetter flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, milk, onion, beef, peas, corn. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).