Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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
Prepare a pie crust and roll it out thickly to line a deep dish.
Cut the beef into small pieces, about the size of an oyster, and slice thinly if possible.
Dredge the beef pieces with flour and season with salt and pepper.
Assemble
Layer the beef in the dish, dotting each layer with small pieces of butter.
Squeeze a little lemon juice over the meat.
If you have leftover gravy from roast meat, add a few drops of Worcestershire sauce and pour it over the meat.
If no gravy is available, add water to the meat until it reaches half its height.
Cover the top with a crust, pinching the edges together.
Bake
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.
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.
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Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together27,047 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
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Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,971 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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
- Beef
- Provides the savory meat filling that cooks through during baking.
- Flour
- Coats the beef lightly, helping seal in juices and thicken the surrounding liquid.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, moistening the meat as it melts during baking.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the rich meat filling.
- Pie crust
- Encloses the filling and holds it together while it bakes.
The step that matters
Adding liquid under the crust. Too little gravy or water leaves the meat dry, while too much can soak the crust. Adding water to half the filling's height keeps the meat moist without flooding the pastry.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, butter, sauce):
- Avocadofits about as well
- Lemonthe original
- Raisinfits about as well
- Limefits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, butter, sauce. 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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