Skip to main content
Main

Sea Pie

Sea Pie is a meat pie made with salt beef, pickled pork, veal, mutton, goose or duck, onions, potatoes, and a suet pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 the filling

  1. Combine salt beef, pickled pork, veal, mutton, goose or duck, onions, and potatoes in a large bowl. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Make and layer the pastry

  1. Mix chopped beef suet, flour, and water to make a paste. Knead well and roll out the paste.

  2. Line a large bowl with the paste, then layer the meat and vegetables alternately inside.

  3. Cover the filling with more paste, place a cloth over the bowl, and boil for four hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the cloth, make a small hole in the top, and add a good consommé.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Beef + oniontop 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

Flour
Forms the paste that wraps and holds the filling together during boiling.
Beef suet
Adds fat to the paste, keeping it tender and rich as it cooks.
Potatoes
Absorb flavour from the meat and add body and starch to the filling.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma as they cook slowly in the filling.
Salt beef
Contributes salty, savoury flavour and chewy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Sealing the paste over the filling. The paste crust must fully enclose the filling so it stays moist and the juices are held in during the long boil. Gaps let water in and flavour out, leaving the filling dry or watery.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, veal, mutton, potato, 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.

You might also like

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipes