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Cottage Pie

A baked meat pie topped with boiled potatoes and bacon or butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cottage 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.

Make the base

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the slice of bread in a pie dish.

  3. Add pepper, salt, shallot, nutmeg, lemon rind, parsley, thyme, and stock to the dish.

  4. Cook these ingredients in the oven for about 1 hour.

Build and bake

  1. Thoroughly mix in the minced meat and add more stock if necessary to fill the dish.

  2. Cover with the boiled potatoes and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Top with bacon strips or butter pieces.

  4. Bake the pie for 1.5 hours.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the savoury body of the filling, cooking through in the stock.
Bread
Soaks up liquid and helps bind the filling so it stays moist.
Stock
Adds moisture so the filling cooks gently and fills the dish.
Boiled potatoes
Forms a smooth starchy topping that softens in the oven and browns on top.
Butter or bacon fat
Melts over the potatoes, encouraging browning and adding richness.
Shallot
Adds mild savoury sweetness that softens as it cooks.

The step that matters

Thoroughly mix in the minced meat. Raw meat must be evenly distributed and fully cooked through. Enough stock keeps the filling moist, and a full dish prevents dry spots and uneven cooking.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, bread, pepper, shallot, lemon, parsley, thyme):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Winter savoryfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, bread, pepper, shallot, lemon, parsley, thyme. 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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