Name: Mutton Pie
Ingredients: 1 tin roast or boiled mutton; 1 or 2 onions; 2 large potatoes; A little gravy; Powdered herbs; Butter; Coarse sea salt; Pepper

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 ↓

Mutton Pie

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

Boil the potatoes and onions until tender. Mash the potatoes and mince the onions.
Mince the mutton and mix it with the onions and a good seasoning of salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

Butter a pie dish and line it with the mashed potatoes.
Layer the minced mutton moistened with gravy on top of the potatoes, then add another layer of mashed potatoes. Repeat until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of potatoes.
Dot the top with small pieces of butter and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

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).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Mutton: Provides the savoury meat filling that forms the main body of the pie.
Potatoes: Form the mashed layers that hold the filling and give a soft, moist texture.
Onions: Add sweetness and savoury depth to the minced meat filling.
Butter: Adds richness and helps the potato top brown in the oven.