Name: Raised Beef Steak Pie
Ingredients: beefsteaks; butter; 1 tablespoon shallot, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon thyme, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon parsley, finely chopped; 1 tablespoon mushrooms, finely chopped; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Raised Beef Steak 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.

Prepare a pie crust to fit your dish.
Butter a sauté pan and sprinkle it with shallot, thyme, parsley, and mushrooms.
Add the beefsteaks to the pan and season with pepper and salt.
Cook for a few minutes, then turn the beefsteaks, season again, and let them cool completely.
Once cooled, place the beefsteaks in the pie crust.
Scrape the herbs from the sauté pan and add them to the pie.
Cover the pie and decorate as desired.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until done.
Remove the top crust and add some good gravy.

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.

Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together9,057 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,737 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Shallot + thymetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,476 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,585 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).