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Meat Pie

A savory pie with stewed meat, potatoes, and butter, topped with a crust and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Meat Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the meat in enough water to cover it until tender.

  2. Line the sides of a pudding dish with rich crust.

  3. Layer the stewed meat in the dish, seasoning well with salt, pepper, and onion.

  4. Add a layer of sliced boiled potatoes and bits of butter.

  5. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

Finish and bake

  1. Pour the gravy from the stewed meat over the layers, thickened with a little flour.

  2. Cover with a thick crust, leaving a slit in the middle.

  3. If the pie gets dry, add more gravy or a little hot water.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main savoury filling, becoming tender through slow stewing in water.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it coats the layers instead of running off.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the layers as it melts through the filling.
Sliced boiled potatoes
Adds body and starch that soaks up gravy, filling out the pie.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with flour. Flour must be cooked in the hot stewing liquid to thicken it evenly; added raw or in lumps it stays grainy and fails to bind the gravy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, potato, butter, 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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