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Mushroom Pie

A pie made with mushrooms, steak, onion, suet or butter, seasoned, stewed, and encased in pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the mushrooms into small pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. In a bowl, combine the chopped steak and minced onion, then season.

  3. If the steak is lean, add a small piece of suet or butter.

Stew the filling

  1. Place the chopped steak and mushrooms in a deep saucepan, cover, and stew slowly until tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a pie crust as for beefsteak pie, lightly browning the bottom crust in a deep dish.

  2. Add the mushroom and steak stew to the crust and cover with a top crust, lightly punctured.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Common mushrooms
Release moisture and savory flavor into the filling as they stew.
Round steak
Provides the meaty body of the filling, which becomes tender through slow stewing.
Suet or butter
Adds fat and richness to a lean steak, keeping the filling moist.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until tender. Round steak is a lean, tough cut. Slow, covered stewing breaks down its connective tissue gradually, so the meat becomes tender rather than dry or chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, butter, 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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