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Beef Pie

A savory pie with roast beef, onions, gravy, mashed potatoes, and a golden crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato 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 ↓

Beef 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 the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Fry the sliced onion in beef drippings until soft.

  3. Add flour to the onions and cook until browned.

  4. Layer the onion mixture in a pie dish, followed by the beef.

  5. Season with salt and pepper, and add tomato slices if desired.

  6. Pour in the beef juice and gravy to nearly fill the dish.

  7. Add water or beef stock as needed.

Top and bake

  1. Mash the boiled potatoes with salt and cream or butter until light.

  2. Spread the mashed potatoes over the beef mixture, about 1.5 inches thick.

  3. Brush the top with beaten egg.

  4. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes until browned.

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

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

  2. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

  3. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Beef + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 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

Beef
Provides the main savory meat filling and rich flavor of the pie.
All-purpose flour
Cooked with the onions to brown and thicken the filling.
Potatoes
Form the light, soft mashed topping that covers the filling.
Beef drippings
Fat that softens the onion and carries savory meat flavor into the filling.
Egg
Brushed on top to help the potato crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour with the onions until browned. Flour cooked in fat until browned loses its raw taste and later thickens the gravy evenly. Undercooked flour leaves a pasty flavor and can make the filling gluey.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, onion, flour, pepper, potato, cream, 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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