Name: Shepherd Pie
Ingredients: 1 pound raw meat or leftover meat, cut into small pieces; 1 cup tomato, chopped; 1 teaspoon salt; cereal (rice, cornmeal, or mush) for crust; fat for greasing the baking dish

Why it works: Tomato and rice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,065 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Shepherd Pie

Ingredients

1 pound raw meat or leftover meat, cut into small pieces
1 cup tomato, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
cereal (rice, cornmeal, or mush) for crust
fat for greasing the baking dish

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.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Brown the meat with onion in a little fat until the color disappears.
Add the chopped tomato and salt, and mix well.
Grease a baking dish and layer with cereal, then add the meat and gravy mixture.
Cover with more cereal and dot with fat.
Bake for 30-40 minutes until golden brown.

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.

Tomato + ricetop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,065 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Meat + ricetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Meat + tomatotop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,438 recipes

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