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Sea Pie

Sea Pie is a layered meat and potato dish with a thick pudding crust, boiled for two hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare a thick pudding crust and line a dish with it.

Layer the filling

  1. Layer sliced onions at the bottom, followed by salted beef slices and some fat.

  2. Add a layer of sliced potatoes, then a layer of pork, and another layer of onions.

  3. Sprinkle pepper over all layers.

Cover and boil

  1. Cover with the crust and tie it down tightly with a cloth dipped in boiling water and dusted with flour.

  2. Boil for two hours and serve in the dish.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Onion + beeftop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Thick pudding crust
Encloses the filling so it cooks gently in its own steam during the long boil.
Onions
Soften and turn sweet as they cook, flavouring the layers.
Salted beef
Provides salty, savoury meat flavour that seasons the filling.
Potatoes
Release starch that thickens the juices and gives the filling body.
Pork
Adds rich meat flavour and juices to the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the crust tightly. A tight seal keeps steam inside and water out, so the crust and filling cook through during the two-hour boil. The floured cloth helps keep the crust from sticking to the cloth as it swells.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Onionthe original
  4. Carrotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, pork, pepper, flour. 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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