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Pork and Yam Pie

A savory pie of minced pork, onions, garlic, and mashed yam topping.

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) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and yam work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and 30 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

The recipe

Time35-45 minutes

Ingredients

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

Directions

Make the meat filling

  1. Fry the onions and garlic in the butter.

  2. Add the parsley, pepper and pork and cook.

  3. Add salt, pepper and tomato juice and simmer, covered for 45 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat and add capers, raisins and wine.

Make the yam topping

  1. Boil the yam until tender and mash with butter or olive oil.

  2. Mix in the egg and baking powder.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill with the meat mixture.

  2. Put the remaining yam puree evenly over the meat mixture.

  3. Bake for 35-45 minutes.

  4. Serve with steamed spinach or a salad.

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. Pork + yamtop 15% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Garlic + tomatotop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together14,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  5. Parsley + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork or turkey
Provides the savoury, meaty body of the filling.
Yam
Forms the mashed topping, giving a soft, moist layer that sets and browns in the oven.
Egg
Binds the yam puree so it holds its shape when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the yam topping, helping it rise and turn light.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they fry, building the base flavour of the filling.
Tomato juice
Adds moisture and mild acidity that help the meat simmer tender.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg and baking powder into the yam. The yam must be mashed smooth and cooled enough before the egg and baking powder go in. Hot mash can scramble the egg, and overmixing can knock out the gas from the baking powder, leaving the topping dense.

Flavor stand-ins for the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, onion, garlic, butter, parsley, pepper, tomato):

  1. Thymebetter flavor fit
  2. Celerybetter flavor fit
  3. Basilbetter flavor fit
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, onion, garlic, butter, parsley, pepper, tomato. 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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