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Tomato Meat Pie

A baked pie with layers of chopped meat, stewed tomatoes, and cracker crumbs, finished with gravy or milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Tomato Meat Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Layer the pie

  1. Line a baking dish with cracker crumbs.

  2. Add a layer of chopped meat and season with salt, pepper, and butter.

  3. Add a layer of seasoned stewed tomatoes.

  4. Repeat the layers, finishing with cracker crumbs on top.

  5. Pour in any available gravy or a little milk to moisten the pie.

Bake

  1. Bake until heated through and the top is 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or lamb
Provides the savory meat base that forms the body of the pie.
Cracker crumbs
Form the base and top layers, soaking up juices and browning in the oven.
Stewed tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that give the layers a tangy, saucy character.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the meat layer and helps browning.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Onionfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, milk. 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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