Skip to main content
Main

Cornish Pasties

A pastry filled with diced steak, potatoes, and onion, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Cornish Pasties

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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the diced steak, potatoes, onion, and cold water.

Assemble the pasties

  1. Roll out the short pastry and cut into circles.

  2. Place a portion of the filling on one half of each pastry circle.

  3. Fold the pastry over and seal the edges.

  4. Place the pasties on a greased baking tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in the hot oven for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 350°F (175°C) and bake for an additional 30 minutes.

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 + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 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

Buttock steak
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender during the long baking.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk to the filling, absorbing juices as they cook.
Short pastry
Forms the sealed casing that holds the filling and bakes to a crisp, golden shell.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it cooks inside the pasty.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not sealed firmly, juices and steam can escape during baking, leaving the filling dry and the pastry soggy or open.

“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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes