Skip to main content
Main

Meat Pies

A savory pie made with cornmeal or rice or hominy, meat, onion, tomato, and fat, baked in layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rice and tomato 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 ↓

Meat Pies

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.

Make the filling

  1. Melt the fat in a pan.

  2. Add the sliced onion and cook until softened.

  3. If using raw meat, add it to the pan and stir until it turns brown.

  4. If using cooked meat, add it after the onion is browned and heat through.

  5. Add the tomato and salt, stirring to combine.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a baking dish.

  2. Layer in the cereal.

  3. Add the meat mixture on top.

  4. Cover with another layer of cereal.

  5. Dot with fat.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Rice + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  4. Rice + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

Cornmeal
Forms the cooked base and top layers that hold the pie together and give it body.
Meat
Provides savory flavor and substance in the filling; browning raw meat adds rich, roasted flavor.
Onion
Softens as it cooks, adding sweetness and aroma to the filling.
Tomato
Adds moisture and acidity that season and loosen the meat filling.
Fat
Adds richness and helps the onion and meat brown; dotted on top it encourages browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Browning the raw meat. If raw meat is stirred only until grey instead of browned, it loses flavor development. Browning through the Maillard reaction builds savory depth that the tomato and onion cannot add later.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, pepper, meat, tomato):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, pepper, meat, tomato. 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.

You might also like

Meatless Tomato SoupMeatless Tomato Soup23 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesRice FrittersRice Fritters84 recipes