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Meat Pie

A savory pie with steak, onions, potatoes, and sage, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Meat 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.

Make the filling

  1. Boil the steak pieces until tender.

  2. Add the sliced onion and potatoes to the meat and boil until the potatoes are done.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and sage, adding butter if the mixture is not rich enough.

  4. Mix flour with water to make a smooth paste and thicken the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a baking dish with pie crust, fill with the meat and potato mixture, and cover with another crust.

  2. 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. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Potato + sagetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during boiling and gives the pie its savory base.
Potatoes
Add body and starch, thickening the filling and making it hearty.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a smooth, spoonable filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, improving flavor and mouthfeel of the filling.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the golden exterior.

The step that matters

Make the flour paste smooth before thickening. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed to hot liquid. Mixing it with cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly, so the filling thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, sage, butter, flour):

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

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