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Steak-pie

A boiled pie filled with seasoned steak, onions, potatoes, mint, carrots, and optional spices, wrapped in suet pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Steak-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pastry

  1. Make puff pastry with flour and suet according to recipe No. 369.

  2. Line a bowl with some pastry.

  3. Cut a piece of pastry for the cover.

Fill and seal

  1. Season the steaks or chops with salt and pepper.

  2. Layer the seasoned steaks or chops in the bowl.

  3. Add chopped onions, potatoes, mint leaves, and carrots on top.

  4. Sprinkle pounded spices over the layers, if desired.

  5. Add enough water to create gravy.

  6. Cover the filling with pastry.

  7. Seal the edges of the pastry.

Boil

  1. Place the bowl in a pot of boiling water.

  2. Cook for 2 hours.

  3. Ensure the water level remains high enough, adding more if necessary.

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

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

  2. Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Flour
Forms the pastry that encloses and holds the filling together.
Suet
Adds richness and fat to the pastry, making it tender.
Steaks or chops
Provide the meat that becomes tender during long, gentle cooking.
Potatoes
Absorb the meat juices and gravy, thickening the filling as they cook.
Onions
Add savoury depth and sweetness as they soften in the juices.

The step that matters

Keep the water level high during boiling. If the water drops, the bowl is exposed and the pastry can dry out or the filling can cook unevenly. Topping up with boiling water keeps the heat steady for the full two hours.

Swap the mint

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Cuminfits better
  4. Mintthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, onion, potato, carrot. 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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