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Sea Pie

A meat pie with a suet and flour crust, cooked over a pot of beef and vegetables.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and coat with a mixture of pepper, salt, and flour.

  2. Slice the carrot; peel the turnip thickly and cut into thick pieces.

  3. In a medium-sized saucepan, combine the meat and vegetables, then add enough cold water to cover them.

  4. Place the saucepan over heat and bring to a boil.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, suet, baking powder, and a pinch of salt. Moisten with cold water to form a firm dough.

  2. Roll out the dough to fit the top of the saucepan.

Stew and serve

  1. Once the meat is boiling, place the crust on top and cover the saucepan with a lid.

  2. Stew gently for 1½ hours, occasionally loosening the crust from the sides of the pan with a knife.

  3. Before serving, carefully remove the crust with a fish slice.

  4. Serve the meat and vegetables on a flat dish, placing the crust on top.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the savoury meat base that the stew is built around.
Suet
Adds fat to the dough, keeping the crust tender and rich.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough and thickens the coating on the meat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the crust rise and turn light.

The step that matters

Loosening the crust during stewing. A crust sitting on the pot can stick to the sides and tear when lifted. Loosening it with a knife keeps it intact and lets steam escape, so the crust stays tender rather than soggy or torn.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper. 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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