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Meat Pie

A pie with cold meat, gravy, and a crust made from flour, butter or lard, baking powder, and water or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Meat Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the cold meat in water until tender.

  2. Add flour to create enough gravy to fill the baking dish; season with salt and pepper.

Make the crust

  1. For the crust, rub butter or lard into the flour.

  2. Mix in baking powder and enough water or milk to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough, grease it with butter, sprinkle with flour, and roll again.

  4. Divide the dough in half for the bottom and top crusts.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 40 minutes.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Flour and butter 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

Cold meat
Provides the main filling, becoming tender after boiling in water.
Flour (for gravy)
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy that fills the pie.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into flour to add fat, creating a tender, flaky crust texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the crust rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Rubbing fat into the flour for the crust. Coating flour particles with fat limits gluten development, so the crust stays tender rather than tough. Keeping the mixture cool helps the fat stay in distinct pieces, which contributes to flakiness.

“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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