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Northumberland Pot Pie

A pot pie made with beef, onions, and a flour and lard crust, boiled for 3½ hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Northumberland Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces.

  2. Add chopped onions, salt, and pepper to the beef.

Make the dough

  1. Make a pie dough with flour, water, salt, and lard.

  2. Roll out the dough thinly.

Assemble and boil

  1. Place the meat mixture in the center of the dough.

  2. Fold the dough over the meat and pinch it tight.

  3. Add 1 cup of water.

  4. Place the pie in a pudding bag.

  5. Boil for 3½ hours.

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. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Round beef
Provides the meat that becomes tender during long, slow cooking.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the filling while it cooks.
Lard
Adds fat to the dough, making it tender and flaky.
Onions
Add aroma and savory sweetness to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Pinching the dough closed. A tight seal keeps the filling and its juices inside during the long boil. A weak seal lets liquid escape and can leave the filling dry and the dough soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, flour):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour. 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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