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Shepherds Pie

A baked dish of diced mutton, boiled potatoes, butter, cream, and flour topped with a dough crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Shepherds Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. In a deep dish, combine the diced mutton, cold boiled potatoes, stock, salt, pepper, and butter.

Make the potato topping

  1. In a pot, boil the peeled potatoes until tender, then mash them.

  2. Mix in the cream, butter, salt, and pepper, beating until light.

  3. Add enough flour to form a soft dough, about 1 cup.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll the dough into a thick sheet and cover the meat mixture with it.

  2. Make a small hole in the center for steam to escape.

  3. Bake for 1 hour and serve in the baking 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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the savoury meat base that the dish is built around.
Potatoes
Form the moist filling and the mashed topping that gives the pie its body.
Cream
Adds richness and softness to the mashed potato, making it light and smooth.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and flavour in both the filling and the mashed topping.
Flour
Binds the mashed potato mixture into a soft dough that can be rolled into a sheet.

The step that matters

Making the dough sheet. Adding too much flour makes the dough tough and dense, while too little leaves it too soft to roll and cover the filling. Beating the mash until light also helps keep the topping tender.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, butter, pepper, potato, cream, flour):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

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