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Dessert

Savory Pie

A pie filled with chopped steak, potatoes, onion, and gravy, topped with a butter‑flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Savory Pie

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 filling

  1. Chop the cold fried steak, cooked potatoes, and cold boiled onion.

  2. Moisten the mixture with leftover brown gravy.

  3. Place the mixture in a deep baking dish.

Make the crust and bake

  1. Make a pie crust with flour and butter, adding cold water to form a soft dough.

  2. Cover the top and sides of the dish with the pie crust.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fried steak
Provides the main meat and savory flavor of the filling.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, helping the filling hold together when sliced.
Brown gravy
Adds moisture and savory depth so the filling does not dry out in the oven.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the pie crust with butter and water.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and helps it brown.

The step that matters

Adding the cold water to the crust. Cold water keeps the butter in small pieces, which creates flaky layers as it melts in the oven. Too much water makes the dough tough.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, butter. 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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