Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓
Beef Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Cook the beef
Combine small pieces of beef and enough water to cover in a pot.
Boil slowly for 2 hours, keeping the pot covered.
Halfway through cooking, prepare thinly sliced raw potatoes and thin pieces of salt pork.
Assemble and bake
Line the sides of a pie dish with plain pie crust, placing an inverted teacup in the center to absorb juice.
Layer the dish with beef.
Add a layer of potatoes seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, and optional onions.
Add a layer of pork.
Repeat layers until the dish is full.
Pour in the meat broth until almost full.
Cover with an upper crust, making a slit in the middle and pricking it with a fork to allow steam to escape.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.
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.
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Beef + porktop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,690 recipes
Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
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Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,023 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
-
Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together17,451 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
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Potato + porktop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,668 recipes
Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
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Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,092 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
- Small pieces of beef
- Provides the main meat and, after slow simmering, tender texture and rich broth.
- Raw potatoes
- Form a starchy layer that absorbs seasoning and adds body to the filling.
- Salt pork
- Adds fat and savory flavor that carries through the layers as it cooks.
- Plain pie crust
- Forms the enclosing shell and top crust that hold the filling while it bakes.
The step that matters
Pricking the upper crust and leaving the steam slit. Trapped steam can build pressure and lift or split the crust, and the slit with fork pricks lets vapor escape so the crust bakes evenly.
Swap the onion
The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, pork, pepper, clove):
- Capsicumfits better
- Carrotfits about as well
- Tomatofits about as well
- Onionthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, pork, pepper, clove. 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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