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Baking

Meat Pie

A baked pie filled with chopped cooked meat, potatoes, and onion, topped with biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease a pie dish and line it with Biscuit Dough, reserving some for the cover.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped meat, potatoes, onion, salt, and pepper.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie dish.

  3. Moisten the edges of the pie and cover with the reserved dough, making sure to perforate the top.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + biscuittop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together428 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

Chopped cooked meat
Forms the savory filling that makes up the body of the pie.
Chopped cooked potato
Adds bulk and soft texture to the filling and absorbs some of its moisture.
Chopped onion
Adds savory flavour to the filling as it cooks in the oven.
Biscuit dough
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Moisten the edges before covering. Moistening the rim of the bottom dough lets the top crust bond to it, so the edges seal and steam cannot escape through gaps during baking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, potato, biscuit. 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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