Name: Beef Pie
Ingredients: cold sliced beef; 4 Irish potatoes; 5 tomatoes; butter; coarse sea salt; pepper; parsley; flour

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 ↓

Beef 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

Slice and boil the potatoes for a few moments.
Slice the beef thinly.
Skin the potatoes and cut them fine.
Line a round baking pan with pastry.
Pre-bake the pastry at 400°F (200°C) for a few moments.

Layer the filling

Layer the sliced beef, boiled potatoes, and tomatoes in the pan.
Sprinkle each layer with pepper, salt, and flour.
Add small lumps of butter on each layer.
Add a little parsley on each layer.
Add small pieces of pastry on each layer.

Bake and serve

Use the potato water to make the gravy.
Cover the top with pastry.
Bake until done.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,855 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Potato + tomatotop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,798 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,448 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

Cold sliced beef: Provides the savory meat base and the main body of the pie.
Potatoes: Add soft, filling bulk and starch that helps the juices thicken.
Tomatoes: Add moisture and gentle acidity that brightens the savory filling.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and keeps layers moist.
Flour: Thickens the juices between the layers into a gravy.
Parsley: Adds a fresh herbal aroma to the layers.

The step that matters

Pre-bake the pastry. Moist filling can make pastry soggy. A short pre-bake sets and dries the base so it stays crisp under the layers.

Swap the tomato

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

Chivefits better
Carrotfits better
Shallotfits better
Tomatothe original

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