Name: Meat-potato Pie
Ingredients: cold meat (chopped fine); salt; pepper; catsup or chili sauce; gravy; mashed potatoes; butter; bread crumbs or cracker crumbs

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Meat-potato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Chop the cold meat into small pieces and place it in a deep pie plate.
Season the meat with salt, pepper, and catsup or chili sauce.
Pour any gravy over the seasoned meat.
Spread a layer of mashed potatoes over the meat and gravy.
Dot the top with small pieces of butter and sprinkle with bread or cracker crumbs.
Score the top with a knife in squares and bake until well-browned.
Serve directly from the dish.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the potato

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

Capsicumfits better
Tomatofits about as well
Shallotfits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, sauce, butter, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.