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Beef Pot Pie

A savory pie with beef, pork, turnip, carrot, onion, and short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Beef Pot Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef and pork into pieces.

  2. Place the meat in a kettle with chopped vegetables and enough water or stock to cover.

  3. Stew until tender, then season with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

  1. Transfer the mixture to a deep baking dish.

  2. Roll out a thin layer of baking pastry crust to cover the dish.

  3. Make 2 or 3 holes in the crust for steam to escape.

  4. Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  3. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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 meat and savory flavor, becoming tender through slow stewing.
Salt pork
Adds fat and rich flavor to the stewed filling.
Short crust pastry
Forms a tender, golden crust that seals the filling in the dish.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stewed filling.
Carrot
Adds subtle sweetness and moisture to the filling as it stews.

The step that matters

Stew until tender. Lean beef becomes tender only after long, gentle simmering that breaks down connective tissue. Seasoning after stewing lets the salt be judged against the reduced liquid.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pork, onion, pepper, carrot):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pork, onion, pepper, carrot. 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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