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Meat and Potato Pie

A baked dish of cooked meat and mashed potatoes topped with a browned egg yolk and milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,611 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Meat and Potato Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Mix the cooked meat and gravy in a small baking dish.

  2. Spread the hot mashed potatoes over the top.

  3. Beat the egg yolk with the milk and brush the mixture over the potatoes.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the dish on the upper rack of a 350°F (175°C) oven and bake until the top is lightly browned.

  2. Serve immediately.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Meat + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,703 recipes

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

  5. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the savoury filling that the potato topping covers.
Mashed potatoes
Forms the topping, which crisps and browns in the oven.
Gravy
Adds moisture and flavour to the meat filling.
Egg yolk
Helps the topping brown and gives it a glossy finish.
Milk
Thins the egg wash so it spreads evenly and browns the surface.

The step that matters

Brushing the potatoes with egg wash. Egg yolk proteins and milk sugars brown under dry oven heat, so the wash must cover the potatoes evenly. Patchy coverage gives an uneven, pale top.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, sauce, egg, milk):

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, sauce, egg, milk. 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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