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Beefsteak Pie

A pie filled with stewed beef, onions, and sliced potatoes, topped with a crust and baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Beefsteak 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

  1. Stew the steak with the bone in just enough water to cover until partly cooked.

  2. Line a baking dish with pie paste.

Assemble

  1. Layer the meat in the dish with salt, pepper, and onion.

  2. Add a layer of sliced potatoes and dot with butter.

  3. Repeat layers of steak and potatoes until the dish is full.

  4. Thicken the broth with brown flour and add it to the dish.

  5. Cover with a top crust, making a slit in the middle.

Bake

  1. Brush the crust with beaten egg and bake at 400°F (200°C) until 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.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Steak
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender through partial stewing and further baking.
Potatoes
Form starchy layers that add body and soak up the savoury broth.
Brown flour
Thickens the broth so it binds the filling rather than running out of the pie.
Egg
Brushed on the crust, it promotes browning and a glossy golden finish.

The step that matters

Thicken the broth with brown flour before adding it. Flour must be cooked into the liquid to thicken it and avoid raw floury taste; a thin broth would leak and make the crust soggy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, butter, flour, egg. 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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