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Tamale Pie

A baked dish of cornmeal dough layered with seasoned ground beef and tomatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Tamale 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.

Make the cornmeal dough

  1. In boiling water, mix cornmeal and ¼ teaspoon salt to make a dough.

  2. Cook the dough for 45 minutes.

Make the meat filling

  1. In a pan, brown the onion in fat.

  2. Add the ground beef and stir until it turns brown.

  3. Add salt, pepper, and tomatoes to the beef mixture.

  4. Optionally, include a sweet pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease a baking dish.

  2. Layer half of the cornmeal dough, then the seasoned meat mixture, and top with the remaining dough.

  3. Bake in the oven 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. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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 dough base that cooks into the firm crust and layers of the pie.
Ground beef
Provides the meaty, savory body of the filling and browns for flavor.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that season and loosen the meat filling.
Onion
Browns in fat to build a sweet, aromatic base for the filling.

The step that matters

Cook the cornmeal dough fully. Cornmeal starch must gelatinize in boiling water to set into a firm, sliceable dough. Undercooked cornmeal stays grainy and cannot hold its layers when baked.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, beef, pepper. 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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