Name: Meat and Potato Pie
Ingredients: cold meat, cut into 1-inch pieces; 1 onion, chopped; 2 tablespoons flour; 1 teaspoon mixed herbs; ¼ teaspoon pepper; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); water, as needed; cooked potatoes, sliced; short pastry for covering

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

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the pie

Place the cold meat in a pie dish and sprinkle the chopped onion over it.
In a bowl, mix flour, mixed herbs, pepper, and salt with enough water to moisten.
Pour the mixture over the meat.
Layer the sliced cooked potatoes on top.

Bake

Cover with short pastry and bake for about 1 hour.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

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

Cold meat: Forms the main filling and provides savory, meaty flavor.
Flour: Thickens the moistened mixture so it binds around the meat and onion.
Onion: Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks in the filling.
Cooked potatoes: Adds body and starch that help make the filling hearty.

The step that matters

Moistening the flour mixture. Flour needs enough water to dissolve evenly; if it is dry or clumped, it will not thicken the filling smoothly and may leave pockets of raw flour taste.

Swap the onion

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

Spinachfits better
Capsicumfits better
Okrafits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, flour, pepper, potato. 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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Meat and Potato Pie