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Potato Pie with Cold Meat

A baked potato pie layered with cold meat, tomatoes, onions, and eggs, seasoned with salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Potato Pie with Cold Meat

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 the filling

  1. Chop the cold meat with tomatoes and onion.

  2. Season the mixture well.

  3. Add 2 eggs.

Make the potato layer

  1. Boil floury potatoes until tender.

  2. Drain the potatoes.

  3. Mash them in the saucepan.

  4. Season the mashed potatoes with salt, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and 1 egg.

  5. Mix the seasoned potatoes well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a dish.

  2. Layer some mashed potatoes at the bottom.

  3. Add the meat mixture.

  4. Sprinkle with lemon juice.

  5. Cover with remaining mashed potatoes.

  6. Smooth the top.

  7. Create a crosshatch pattern with a knife.

  8. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

  9. Serve in the dish.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 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

Floury potatoes
Starch that mashes smooth, forming the soft body and crust of the pie.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when baked, holding the filling together.
Cold meat
Provides the main savoury filling, chopped small so it blends with the other filling ingredients.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity to the meat filling.
Onion
Adds savoury flavour and moisture to the meat filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and potato.

The step that matters

Mix the seasoned potatoes well. Thorough mixing spreads the egg and seasoning evenly through the mash, so the potato layer binds and bakes consistently rather than setting in patches.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, tomato, egg, potato, pepper, nutmeg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, tomato, egg, potato, pepper, nutmeg, parsley. 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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