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Sea Pie

A savory pie made with equal parts meat, potatoes, onions, and a suet crust, boiled for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion 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 ↓

Sea Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the meat into small pieces and peel the potatoes.

  2. Slice the onions.

  3. In a saucepan, fill it half full of water, add pepper and salt.

  4. Add half the meat, half the potatoes, and onions to the saucepan and bring to a boil.

Layer and boil

  1. Make a pudding crust with suet or fat, cut it in half, and roll each half out to the size of the saucepan lid.

  2. Place one piece of crust in the saucepan to form the first layer, then add another layer of meat, potatoes, and onions.

  3. Cover with the second piece of crust, cut a hole in the top, and boil gently for at least 1.5 hours.

  4. A third layer can be added if desired.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Meat + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together786 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Meat + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,364 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Forms the savoury main filling and gives the pie its richness as it cooks.
Potatoes
Bulk the filling and absorb cooking liquid, becoming soft and filling.
Suet or fat
Makes the pudding crust tender and rich as it steams.

The step that matters

Boil gently under the crust. A rolling boil can toughen the meat and break up the potatoes and crust. Gentle simmering cooks the layers evenly while keeping the pudding crust light and intact.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, potato, pepper. 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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