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Meat and Potato Pie

A baked pie of mashed potatoes, sliced onions, and tinned mutton, seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

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

Meat and Potato 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

  1. Boil and mash the potatoes, then line a buttered pie dish with them.

  2. Boil and slice the onions.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer slices of meat in the dish, followed by a layer of onions, seasoning both layers.

  2. Add another layer of potatoes and repeat the layers until the dish is full.

  3. Dot the top layer of potatoes with small pieces of butter.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

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

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

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + oniontop 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

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the layers and become soft and starchy when mashed.
Mutton
Provides the savoury meat filling that the layers are built around.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften between the meat and potato layers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the top layer of potatoes.
Gravy
Supplies moisture so the layers stay juicy during baking.

The step that matters

Dot the top layer of potatoes with small pieces of butter.. Butter on the surface carries fat into the top potatoes, helping them brown and giving a richer finish. Spreading it evenly keeps the browning consistent across the pie.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, potato, butter, pepper. 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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