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Beef Pasty

A savory pastry filled with seasoned beef and butter, baked and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Beef Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the beef

  1. Bone the beef.

  2. Beat the beef well with a rolling pin.

  3. Rub sugar into the meat.

  4. Let the meat rest for 24 hours.

  5. Wipe the meat clean.

Season and assemble

  1. Season the meat generously with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Place the seasoned meat in the pasty.

  3. Cover the meat with butter.

  4. Seal the pasty.

Bake and make gravy

  1. Bake the pasty.

  2. Put the bones in a pan and cover them with water.

  3. Bake the bones to make gravy.

  4. Add some of the gravy to the finished pasty.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Beef + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main filling; beating it well helps break down its fibres and tenderise it.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping keep the meat moist as it bakes.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm aroma to the seasoned beef.

The step that matters

Let the meat rest for 24 hours. Sugar and seasoning need time to draw moisture out of the meat and be reabsorbed, so the flavour penetrates evenly. Skipping the rest leaves the seasoning on the surface only.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, pepper, 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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