Skip to main content
Main

Sea Pie

Sea Pie is a layered pastry dish with cooked meat, onion, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Make pastry by mixing butter, dripping, or suet with flour.

  2. Line a buttered pudding dish with the pastry.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer in cooked meat seasoned with pepper and onion, then add a layer of pastry.

  2. Continue layering meat and pastry until the dish is full.

  3. Pour stock or cold water into the dish and cover it tightly.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 3 to 4 hours until done.

Serve

  1. Carefully turn out the pie and serve hot.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter, dripping, or suet
Fat that makes the pastry short and tender by coating the flour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry that encloses the layers.
Cooked meat
Forms the savoury filling that the pastry layers hold together.
Stock or cold water
Adds moisture that steams the pie inside the covered dish as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cover the dish tightly before baking. A tight cover traps steam so the pastry cooks through and the filling stays moist over the long bake. A loose cover lets moisture escape and can leave the filling dry.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, meat, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, meat, 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.

You might also like

Meat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesMeatballsMeatballs37 recipesMince MeatMince Meat37 recipesMeat CakesMeat Cakes35 recipes