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Egg Pasty

A pastry filled with sliced beef, pepper, salt, and eggs baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Egg Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pasty

  1. Make the pasty dough and roll it out.

  2. Cut the beef into slices and place them on the dough with pepper and salt.

  3. Fold the dough over the beef and twist the edges to seal.

Bake and add the eggs

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

  2. Once cooked, break 2 eggs and cut a hole in the top of the pasty.

  3. Pour the eggs into the pasty and let it stand for 5 minutes before serving.

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

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

  2. Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Pasty dough
Encloses the filling and forms a sealed shell that holds in juices while baking.
Slices of beef
Forms the savory main filling of the pasty.
2 eggs
Set in the pasty's residual heat, adding richness and a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the eggs into the baked pasty. The eggs are added after baking, so they cook only from the residual heat of the filling. Letting the pasty stand gives the whites time to set without overcooking the yolks.

“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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