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Sea Pie

Sea Pie is a savory pie made with lean beef, carrots, turnip, onion, suet pastry, and simmered in broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 dip in seasoned flour.

  2. Scrape and slice the carrot.

  3. Peel the turnip thickly and cut into thick slices.

Make the stew

  1. In a medium-sized pan, combine the meat, vegetables, seasoning, and enough cold water to cover.

  2. Bring to a boil.

  3. Simmer gently for 2 hours.

Add the crust and finish

  1. Make the pastry as usual.

  2. Roll it out to fit slightly smaller than the top of the saucepan.

  3. Place the crust on top of the meat.

  4. Cook for another 45 minutes.

  5. Loosen the crust from the sides of the pan with a knife occasionally while cooking.

  6. Divide the crust into 4 or 8 pieces.

  7. Place the meat and vegetables on a plate.

  8. Lay the crust neatly 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

Lean beef or scraps
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long gentle simmering.
Flour
Dusting the meat thickens the cooking liquid slightly and helps it brown.
Suet pastry
Forms a rich, tender crust that steams on top of the stew.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and colour to the stew.
Turnip
Adds mild sweetness and body to the stew as it softens.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 2 hours. A gentle simmer keeps the meat tender and the liquid clear; a hard boil toughens muscle fibres and breaks up the vegetables.

Swap the onion

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

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

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