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Shepherd Pie

Shepherd Pie is a baked dish of cooked meat topped with mashed potatoes and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Shepherd 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 the filling

  1. Pass the cooked meat through a meat chopper.

  2. Season the meat with onion juice and moisten it with gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Mash the potatoes with melted butter until smooth.

  2. Spread the mashed potatoes over the meat mixture.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Add a beaten egg and dot the top with pieces of butter.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until thoroughly hot and nicely browned.

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. Onion + potatotop 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. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the savoury base of the filling and provides most of the flavour.
Gravy
Adds moisture so the meat filling stays juicy rather than dry during baking.
Mashed potatoes
Forms the topping that insulates the filling and browns to a golden crust.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the potato topping brown evenly in the oven.
Beaten egg
Sets when baked, binding the potato topping and helping it brown.

The step that matters

Bake until thoroughly hot and nicely browned. The filling must reach a thorough heat throughout, not just warm at the edges, so it is safe and cooked. Browning of the potato topping relies on the surface drying and the sugars and starches reacting at high oven heat, so the top needs watching.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, egg, 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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