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Lentil Shepherd's Pie

A baked casserole of seasoned lentils topped with mashed potatoes, peas and optional grated cheddar.

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

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 1,099 recipes mention both. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

The recipe

Oven350°F
Time20 minutes

Ingredients

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

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

  2. In a pan, sauté onion in olive oil until translucent.

  3. Add garlic and sauté for 2 minutes.

  4. Add lentils, ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce and seasonings.

  5. Mash mixture a little.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place lentils in casserole dish.

  2. Add peas.

  3. Cover with mashed potatoes and cheese (optional).

  4. Bake for 20 minutes or until potatoes turn light brown.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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. Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together29,030 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Olive + garlictop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together23,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Lentils + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together127 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

  5. Onion + mustardtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,243 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Green lentils
Form the hearty, filling base of the pie and absorb the sauce flavours.
Mashed potatoes
Form the topping, which browns in the oven for a golden crust.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth as it softens in the oil.
Garlic
Adds aroma and savoury flavour when sautéed briefly.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the lentil filling.

The step that matters

Mash the lentil mixture a little. Partly mashing the lentils thickens the filling and helps it hold together under the potato topping, so it does not run when spooned into the dish.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, garlic, lentils, ketchup, mustard, sauce, pepper):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Spinachabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, garlic, lentils, ketchup, mustard, sauce, pepper. 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).

“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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