Name: Meat Pie with Potato Crust
Ingredients: cold roast beef; onion; carrot; celery; salt; pepper; potato crust

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Meat Pie with Potato Crust

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.

Cut cold roast beef into thin slices, removing fat and gristle.
Cover bones and trimmings with cold water.
Add a few slices of onion, carrot, and a stalk of celery.
Let simmer for several hours.
Strain off the broth and simmer the beef slices until tender.
Season with salt and pepper, then pour into a baking dish.
Cover with a round of potato crust with an opening.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about fifteen 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.

Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,173 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together16,012 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 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

Swap the onion

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

Tomatofits about as well
Capsicumfits about as well
Parsnipfits about as well
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, celery, pepper, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.