Skip to main content
Main

Vegetable Pie

A baked pie of sliced potatoes, mushrooms, and onions topped with puff pastry and flavored with meat extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Vegetable Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Layer the filling

  1. Layer half of the potatoes in a pie dish and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  2. Add a layer of sliced onion, followed by a layer of mushrooms, and season again.

  3. Repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  4. Dissolve the Liebig Company’s Extract of Meat in water and add 2 tablespoons to the pie.

Bake and serve

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and cover the dish, making 3 holes for ventilation.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

  3. Add the remaining gravy and serve.

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

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

  3. Potato + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the filling and soften into a tender, starchy body as they bake.
Mushrooms
Release moisture and add savory, earthy flavor to the filling.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks in the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, golden crust that seals and covers the filling.

The step that matters

Venting the pastry. The three holes let steam escape while the pie bakes. Without them, trapped steam can lift or soften the crust and make the filling watery.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, mushroom, pepper, meat. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes