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Beef-steak Pie

A pastry pie filled with sliced beef steak, cold boiled potatoes, butter, and optional mushroom ketchup and onion, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Beef-steak Pie

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-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 the dish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a deep dish and line it with a sheet of pastry.

Layer the filling

  1. Cut the beef steak into small, thin pieces, removing all bone, fat, gristle, and skin.

  2. Beat the meat with a rolling pin to make it juicy and tender.

  3. Layer the meat in the dish, seasoning with salt, pepper, and nutmeg if desired.

  4. Add a small amount of mushroom ketchup and minced onion if using.

  5. Layer thin slices of cold boiled potatoes over the meat, adding a small piece of butter.

  6. Repeat layering meat and potatoes until the dish is full, finishing with a layer of meat on top.

  7. Pour in a little water.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover the pie with a sheet of pastry, trim the edges, and notch it decoratively.

  2. Optionally, create a tulip shape from pastry and place it in the center of the lid, adding leaves around it.

  3. Bake in the oven until 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender as it cooks in the covered pie.
Pastry
Forms the base and lid that enclose the filling and set into a crisp, golden crust.
Cold boiled potatoes
Add starchy body to the filling and help soak up meat juices as the pie bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and helps keep the layers moist and the crust browning evenly.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the meat filling.

The step that matters

Beating the meat with a rolling pin. Pounding breaks up muscle fibres and connective tissue, which helps the meat feel tender and hold juices. Uneven or insufficient beating leaves tougher pieces in the finished pie.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, onion, potato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup, onion, potato. 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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