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Pie to Accompany Roast Beef

A pastry crust over mashed potatoes served with roast beef.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Pie to Accompany Roast Beef

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.

Prepare the dish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a shallow baking dish and coat it with fine bread crumbs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the dish with well mashed and seasoned potatoes, whipped until light.

  2. Cover the potatoes with a pastry crust.

  3. Bake in the oven until the crust is golden.

Serve

  1. Serve with the roast, adding a spoonful or two of brown sauce.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Bread + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together434 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Mashed potatoes
Form the soft, light filling that makes up the body of the pie.
Pastry crust
Covers the filling and browns in the oven, giving a crisp, golden top.
Butter
Greases the dish so the pie releases cleanly and adds a little richness.

The step that matters

Bake until the crust is golden. Baking long enough lets the pastry set and brown fully, so it becomes crisp and cooks the dish through. Pulling it early leaves the crust pale and soft.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, 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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