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Baked Pork Pie

A savory pork pie baked with onions, sage, flour, and stock, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,214 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Baked Pork 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.

Make the filling

  1. Fry the pork pieces in a pan until light brown.

  2. Add the chopped onions and sage, then stir in some flour.

  3. Pour in enough stock to cover the mixture and cook for 30 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the mixture to a baking dish and cover with meat pie crust.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the crust is golden.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  2. Pork + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,527 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Onion + sagetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sage + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Pork
Provides the meat that forms the main body of the filling.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften and cook down in the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the filling becomes saucy rather than watery.
Stock
Supplies moisture that cooks the pork and onions and forms the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Frying the pork until light brown. Browning meat through the Maillard reaction builds deeper savoury flavour, which the stewed filling cannot develop later in the cooking.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sage, 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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