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Cottage Pie

A baked dish of mashed potatoes topped over meat and onion mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cottage Pie

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

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

  2. Grease a pie dish and line it with mashed potatoes.

  3. Add the chopped meat to the dish.

  4. If using raw meat, brown it slightly first.

Assemble and bake

  1. Add the finely chopped onion, mixed herbs, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix flour with cold water to create a gravy and pour it over the meat mixture.

  3. Cover the dish with more mashed potatoes.

  4. Bake for 45 minutes, aiming for a light golden brown on the potatoes.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes
Form the base and topping, crisping and browning on the surface in the oven.
Chopped meat
Provides the savory filling that the gravy binds and the topping covers.
Flour
Thickens the cold water into a gravy that moistens the meat filling.
Finely chopped onion
Adds savory depth and moisture to the meat filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Brown raw meat before layering. Raw meat cooked only in the oven can stay grey and greasy and release excess liquid. Browning it first develops flavor and lets the filling set properly under the potato topping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

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