Name: Potato Pasty
Ingredients: meat; seasoning; butter; water; mashed potatoes; 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 ↓

Potato Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Place the meat at the bottom of a pasty pan.
Season the meat and add butter and a little water.
Screw on the perforated plate with its valve-pipe over the meat.
Arrange the mashed potatoes mixed with milk on the plate, filling to the top of the tube.
Finish the surface of the potatoes in an ornamental manner.
Bake carefully until the potatoes are covered with a delicate crust.

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).