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Sausage Pie

A savory pie filled with minced beef, liver, pork, and spices, topped with bacon and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Sausage Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, mix the minced beef, liver, and fat pork thoroughly.

  2. Add the bread crumbs, mustard, sugar, black pepper, salt, and cayenne, and mix well.

  3. Moisten the mixture with cold water and press it into a buttered dish.

  4. Top with slices of fat bacon.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about 2 hours.

  2. Serve hot or cold.

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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Liver + porktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,606 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pork + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,445 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
Provides the main meaty body and structure of the pie.
Liver
Adds rich flavor and a dense, savory texture to the filling.
Fat pork
Supplies fat that keeps the filling moist and tender as it bakes.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and help bind the mixture so it holds together when sliced.
Fat bacon
Covers the top, adding fat that bastes the surface and browns it.

The step that matters

Moisten the mixture with cold water. Water is added before baking to keep the lean meats from drying out; mixing it in evenly ensures the pie stays juicy throughout.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, liver, pork, bread, sugar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, liver, pork, bread, sugar, 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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