Name: Meat Pie, with Potato Crust
Ingredients: beef or mutton; pepper; coarse sea salt; 1 finely-shredded onion; potatoes; milk; butter; 1 cup water

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Meat Pie, with Potato Crust

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.

Cut beef or mutton into large pieces.
Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and the finely-shredded onion.
Boil and mash the potatoes with milk to form the crust.
Butter a dish and line it with the potato crust.
Place the seasoned meat in the dish and add 1 cup of water.
Cover the meat thickly with the remaining potato crust.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,092 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 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

Swap the onion

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

Capsicumfits about as well
Onionthe original
Tomatofits about as well
Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, potato, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.