Name: The Potato Pasty
Ingredients: meat (your choice); 1 tablespoon butter; a little water; mashed potatoes; a little milk

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The Potato Pasty

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

Season your meat and place it in the bottom of the potato pasty pan.
Add the butter and a little water.
Place the perforated plate on top and screw on the valve-pipe.

Top and bake

Spread the mashed potatoes mixed with milk over the plate, filling to the top of the tube.
Decorate the surface as desired.
Attach the knob to the end of the tube and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until the potatoes are golden brown.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Mashed potatoes: Form the golden crust that covers and seals the filling as it bakes.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the potato topping and meat brown.
Milk: Softens the mashed potatoes so they spread smoothly over the plate.

“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.