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Meat Pie

A savory pie made with cold meat, potatoes, onions, and biscuit dough crust, baked until golden.

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

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the cold meat until tender.

  2. Remove the meat from the liquid and chop it finely.

  3. Return the chopped meat to the pot with diced potatoes and sliced onions.

  4. Cook until the potatoes and onions are tender, adding enough liquid.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt to taste.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a deep dish with biscuit dough crust.

  2. Pour the meat mixture into the dish.

  3. Cover with a top crust about ½ inch thick.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the crust is 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. Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  5. Meat + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together159 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Scraps of cold meat
Forms the savoury main filling of the pie.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that thicken the filling and soften as they cook.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the cooking liquid.
Biscuit dough crust
Forms a golden, structured case and top that holds the filling.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling until tender with enough liquid. If the potatoes and onions are not fully tender, or the mixture is too dry, the filling will be firm and uneven. Enough liquid keeps the filling moist and lets the starch soften evenly during baking.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, 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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Mince Filling 11Mince 10Cold 7French 7Crust 5Pastry 5 See all 92 →

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