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Cornish Pasties

A pastry filled with beef, potatoes, onions, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the beef, potatoes, onions, pepper, and salt.

Make and shape the pastry

  1. In another bowl, rub the dripping into the flour and baking powder.

  2. Add water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Roll the dough into rounds about 6 inches in diameter.

  4. Wet the edges of each round.

  5. Place a portion of the meat and vegetable mixture on one half of each round.

  6. Fold the other half over and pinch the edges to seal, creating a frill.

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).

  2. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry dough when mixed with water.
Dripping
Rubbed into the flour to add fat, tenderness and richness to the pastry.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the pastry as it bakes.
Beef steak
Provides the main filling, cooking through in the sealed pastry.
Potatoes
Add bulk and moisture to the filling as they cook.

The step that matters

Pinching the edges to seal. If the edges are not sealed well and wet first, the filling can leak out and the pastry may open during baking, so the juices escape and the pasty dries out.

Swap the onion

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

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

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