Name: Beef-steak Pie
Ingredients: cold roast beef; raw potatoes; seasoning (to taste); boiling water; pie crust

Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Beef-steak Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the cold roast beef into thin slices, about 1 inch long.
Peel the raw potatoes and cut them into thin slices.

Assemble

In a deep dish, layer some potato slices, then a layer of beef, repeating until the dish is filled.
Season the layers as you would for chicken pie.
Pour boiling water over the layers until filled.

Bake

Cover with a pie crust and bake 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast beef: Provides the main meat filling and savory flavor in the pie.
Raw potatoes: Add starchy body to the filling and soak up flavor as they cook.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the golden top.

“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.