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Corned Beef Pie

A baked pie made with corned beef, onions, eggs, butter, flour, water, mashed potatoes, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Corned Beef Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Mix the corned beef, minced onion, yolk of hard-boiled egg, raw egg, and pepper in a bowl.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Slowly add the boiling water. Stir until perfectly smooth. Boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Pour the mixture into the beef, onion, and egg mixture. Stir until just at boiling point.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer to a baking dish that holds at least 3 pints.

  2. Mash the potatoes with milk, butter, salt, and pepper while hot.

  3. Spread the mashed potatoes over the beef mixture, creating a thick layer.

  4. Brown in a hot oven at 400 °F (200 °C).

  5. Glaze with butter as it begins to color.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 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

Corned beef
Provides the main meat body and savory flavor of the filling.
Raw egg
Binds the beef and onion mixture so it holds together when cooked.
Flour
Thickens the boiling water into a smooth sauce that moistens the filling.
Potatoes
Form a soft mashed topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and glazes the topping for browning.

The step that matters

Brown the potato topping in a hot oven. Mashed potato browns through the Maillard reaction at high heat, so a hot oven and a butter glaze are needed for color. Underheating leaves the top pale and the filling cold.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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