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Meat Pie

A savory pie filled with diced cold cooked meat, herbs, and a buttery roux, topped with crust and bacon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Meat Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Cut cold cooked meat into small dice.

  2. Add pepper, salt, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf to the meat.

  3. Melt butter in a saucepan, then add flour and brown carefully.

  4. Pour in hot water or stock and mix well.

  5. Introduce the meat dice and stir over the fire until thoroughly cooked.

  6. Just before removing from heat, mix in 1-2 eggs for moisture.

Assemble and close the pie

  1. Place a thin pie crust in a pudding dish and fill with a few tablespoons of the mixture.

  2. Layer with a thin strip of bacon and continue layering until the dish is filled.

  3. Cover with a piece of crust, crimp the edges, and make a cut in the center.

  4. Form a strip of pie paste into a knot, wet the bottom, and place it over the cut.

  5. For a pie mould, butter it, press the crust inside, and follow the same filling instructions.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold cooked meat
Forms the main body of the filling and gives the pie its savory flavor.
Flour
Browned in butter, it forms a roux that thickens the stock into a binding sauce.
Eggs
Set when heated, helping bind the filling and add moisture to the mixture.
Butter
Carries flavor and helps brown the flour for the roux.
Hot water or stock
Liquid that turns the browned flour into a sauce around the meat.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs. Eggs should be mixed in just before removing the filling from heat. Added too early or over strong heat, they can scramble and turn grainy instead of giving a smooth, binding texture.

Swap the thyme

The recipe marks thyme as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Thymethe original
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, butter, flour, egg. 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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