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Mushroom Pie

A savory pie filled with mushrooms, steak, onion, and seasonings, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Mushroom Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a deep saucepan, combine chopped mushrooms, chopped steak, and minced onion.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and add suet or butter if needed.

  3. Cover and stew slowly until tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare a pie crust as for beefsteak pie.

  2. Lightly brown the under crust in a deep dish before adding the stew.

  3. Cover with a crust that is lightly punctured.

  4. Bake until the crust is 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.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Common mushrooms
Release moisture and savory flavor as they stew, forming the body of the filling.
Round steak
Provides the meaty base; slow stewing tenderizes its connective tissue.
Suet or butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture when the lean steak needs it.

The step that matters

Stew slowly until tender. Gentle heat over a long time breaks down the steak's connective tissue. Rushing it with high heat leaves the meat tough and the liquid thin.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, butter. 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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