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Meat Pies

A savory pie made with roast beef, water, seasonings, flour, and optional potatoes, topped with a biscuit-like crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Pies

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 the filling

  1. Chop up the cold roast beef or other meat.

  2. Heat the meat with 1 cup of water in a skillet.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and sage.

  4. Thicken the mixture with 5 tablespoons of flour mixed in a little cold water.

  5. Pour the mixture into a deep pan.

  6. Optionally, add cold potatoes to the meat.

Top and bake

  1. Make a crust slightly richer than biscuit dough and spread it over the top.

  2. Make an opening in the crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Sage + potatotop 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

Flour
Thickens the meat juices into a stable, spoonable gravy as it heats.
Cold roast beef or other meat
Forms the main filling, providing savoury flavour and substance.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour mixed in cold water. Flour added directly to hot liquid forms lumps. Mixing it first into a smooth slurry of cold water lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the gravy smoothly as it heats.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, sage, 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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