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Beefsteak Pie

A pie filled with rolled beefsteak pieces, butter, flour, and water, baked with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the steak

  1. Beat the steaks lightly and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Place bits of butter over the surface of the steaks.

  3. Dredge with 1 teaspoon of flour, roll up the steaks, and cut into 2-inch pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a tin basin with pie paste, then add the steak pieces.

  2. Nearly fill the basin with water and add a piece of butter cut small.

  3. Dredge with 1 teaspoon of flour, and season with a little pepper and salt.

  4. Lay skewers across the basin.

  5. Roll out a top crust to ½ inch thickness, cut a slit in the center.

  6. Pinch the top and side crust together around the edge.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour 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

Steaks
Form the filling; their meat becomes tender during the long bake in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat as it melts through the filling.
Flour
Dusted on the meat so it thickens the juices into a gravy.
Pie paste
Forms the lined basin and top crust that enclose the filling.

The step that matters

Pinch the top and side crust together around the edge. A tight seal keeps the steam and juices inside the pie, so the filling cooks through in its own liquid rather than leaking out.

“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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