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Roast Beef Pie

A pie filled with sliced roast beef, potatoes, and optional gravy, topped with biscuit dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Roast Beef Pie

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a deep dish with rich biscuit dough rolled to ¼ inch thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer some sliced roast beef in the dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper.

  2. Add a small bit of butter, a few slices of cold potatoes, and some cold gravy if available.

  3. Repeat layering with beef, seasoning, and potatoes until the dish is full.

  4. Cover with dough, leaving a slit in the center, and bake 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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Potato + biscuittop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together137 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main savoury filling and rich meaty flavour.
Rich biscuit dough
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Cold potatoes
Add bulk and starch that soaks up juices and gives the filling body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown.

The step that matters

Leaving a slit in the dough. The slit lets steam escape while the pie bakes, so pressure does not build up and push the crust apart or make the filling soggy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Onionfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, biscuit. 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.

More roast beef pie recipes

with Potato Crust 7 See all 14 →

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