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Meat and Potato Pie

A pie of stewing beef, onions, and sliced potatoes baked in short pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 and Potato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef into small pieces and place half in a pie dish.

  2. Add the sliced onion, a little water, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and cook in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  4. Allow to cool, then layer the sliced potatoes on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with a lid of short pastry and bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 1 hour.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Stewing beef
Provides the main body of the filling, becoming tender through long, slow cooking.
Parboiled potatoes
Form a starchy layer on top of the filling that softens and absorbs the meat juices.
Flour
Forms the structure of the short pastry lid, which holds its shape as it bakes.
Lard or butter
Adds fat to the pastry, making it short and tender and helping it brown.

The step that matters

Cooling before layering the potatoes. Adding the potatoes while the meat is still very hot can make the layers soggy and the pastry lid heavy. Letting the filling cool slightly helps the layers hold their texture and keeps the pastry crisp as it bakes.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Onionthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Carrotfits about as well

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