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Beefsteak Pie

A savory pie filled with sliced beef, hard‑boiled eggs, and consommé, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beefsteak 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 the filling

  1. Cut the beef into slices about 1/8 inch thick.

  2. Season the beef with salt, pepper, parsley, and a small amount of chives or onion.

  3. Arrange the beef slices in a pie dish, alternating with slices of hard-boiled egg until full.

  4. Pour in the consommé to fill the dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the border of the dish with pastry, wet the top, and cover with more pastry, leaving a hole in the center.

  2. Egg wash the surface and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

Serve

  1. If serving cold, inject hot meat stock or Espagnole sauce into the pie as it cools.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Pepper + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Beef + chivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together304 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

Rump fillet of beef
Forms the main meat filling, staying tender and juicy when sliced thinly and baked.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and richness that contrasts with the beef layers.
Consommé
Supplies moisture and savory flavor that fills the dish around the meat.
Pastry
Forms the structural crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, parsley, egg, meat):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Chivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, parsley, egg, meat. 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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