Name: Potato Pie
Ingredients: 2-3 tablespoons milk; potatoes, sliced; coarse sea salt; mutton, beef, pork, or veal, sliced

Why it works: Milk and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Potato Pie

Ingredients

2-3 tablespoons milk
potatoes, sliced
coarse sea salt
mutton, beef, pork, or veal, sliced

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Skin and slice the potatoes, then season them with coarse sea salt.
Slice the meat of your choice.

Assemble and bake

Layer the sliced potatoes and meat in a pie dish.
Pour the milk over the layers.
Cover with a crust and bake until golden.

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.

Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Potato + muttontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + muttontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together814 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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 become tender as they cook.
Mutton, beef, pork, or veal: Adds savory flavor and richness to the layers as it cooks.
Milk: Adds moisture to the layers and helps the filling become creamy.

“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.