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Beef-steak Pie

A layered pastry pie with beef steak, potatoes, and optional mushroom ketchup and onions.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef-steak Pie

Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Beef-steak Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dish

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a deep dish and line it with pastry dough, covering bottom, sides, and edge.

Layer the filling

  1. Cut beef steak into small, thin pieces about the size of your palm.

  2. Beat the meat with a rolling pin to make it juicy and tender.

  3. Layer the meat in the dish, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg if desired.

  4. Add a layer of sliced potatoes and a small piece of butter on top of the meat.

  5. Repeat layering meat and potatoes until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of meat on top.

  6. Pour in a little water to keep the pie moist.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover the pie with a sheet of pastry, trim the edges, and notch the top with a knife.

  2. Optionally, create a tulip shape from pastry and place it in the center of the lid, adding leaves around it.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until the pastry is golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meat filling, becoming tender and juicy as it cooks.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the filling, soaking up juices as the pie bakes.
Pastry dough
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the layers and helps the pastry brown.

The step that matters

Beating the meat. Beating breaks down some of the muscle fibres in the steak, which helps it turn tender during baking. Cutting the meat into thin, even pieces also helps it cook through at the same rate as the potatoes.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, onion, potato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, onion, potato. 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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