Name: Meat Pies
Ingredients: cold roast beef or other meat; 1 cup water; pepper; coarse sea salt; a bit of sage; 1 tablespoon flour; cold water for mixing; biscuit dough for crust; cold potatoes (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the cold roast beef or other meat.
Heat the meat with 1 cup of water in a skillet.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sage.
Thicken the mixture with 1 tablespoon of flour mixed in a little cold water.
Optionally, add cold potatoes to the meat before pouring into the pan.

Assemble and bake

Pour the mixture into a deep pan.
Make a crust slightly richer than biscuit dough and spread it over the top.
Make an opening in the crust and bake 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.

Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + biscuittop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together889 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 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

Flour: Thickens the meat juices into a gravy-like filling as it is heated.
Biscuit dough: Forms the crust that covers the filling and bakes to golden brown.
Cold roast beef or other meat: Provides the main filling, cooked again in liquid until tender.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, sage, flour, biscuit):

Arrowrootfits better
Spinachfits better
Turnipfits better
Potatothe original

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