Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Pie

A baked pie of stewed potatoes, onion, tomato, butter, pepper, and salt in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Vegetable 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.

Cook the filling

  1. Stew the potatoes and onion in a little water until tender.

  2. Cut up the tomato and mix it in with the vegetables.

  3. Season with pepper and salt, then add the butter.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the vegetable mixture in a small pie dish.

  2. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes or 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.

  1. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Potatoes
Provide the bulk of the filling and thicken it as their starch softens during stewing.
Onion
Adds sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the water.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the vegetables.

The step that matters

Stew in only a little water. Vegetables stewed in too much water stay wet, and that moisture soaks into the pastry, leaving the crust soggy instead of crisp and golden.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, onion, butter, pepper):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, onion, butter, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes