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Meat Pasties

A baked pastry filled with mutton or beef and potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,305 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Pasties

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. Roll out the dripping paste and cut it into large rounds.

  2. Cut the meat into small pieces and place a layer on one half of each round.

  3. Wash, peel, and slice the potatoes thinly, then mix them with the meat and sprinkle over.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fold the paste over the meat, wet the edges, and press them together.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) and 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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mutton + potatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together293 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dripping paste
Forms the crisp, flaky pastry case that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Mutton or beef
Provides the rich, savoury filling that cooks through inside the pastry.
Potatoes
Add bulk and moisture to the filling, softening as the pasty bakes.

The step that matters

Pressing the edges together. Wet and well-pressed edges form a tight seal, so juices and steam stay inside the pasty instead of leaking out and leaving the filling dry.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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.

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