Skip to main content
Main

Stump Pie Meat

A savory pie with beef, marrow, eggs, wine, and spices baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Stump Pie Meat

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 filling

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

  2. Cut the marrow but do not mince it.

  3. Mix the beef and marrow together.

  4. Season the mixture with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, ginger, thyme, parsley, garlic, and onion.

  5. In a bowl, combine the meat mixture with the yolks of the eggs and white wine.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the pie crust and fill it halfway with the meat mixture.

  2. Top with pieces of marrow dipped in egg, then add hard yolks, citron, and dates.

  3. Fill the pie nearly full with the remaining meat mixture.

  4. Cover with the same sweet ingredients as the top.

  5. Bake until cooked through, then cut and serve with sauce.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main body of the filling and gives it its meaty texture.
Marrow
Adds richness and fat, keeping the meat filling moist as it bakes.
Eggs
Yolks bind the meat mixture together and help it set when baked.
White wine
Adds acidity and moisture to the meat mixture, lightly flavouring it.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aroma to the meat filling as it cooks.

The step that matters

Assemble and bake the layers. The filling is layered and covered with pie crust, so it cooks slowly in the middle. Baking until cooked through matters because the raw meat and marrow must reach a safe internal temperature throughout, not just at the edges.

Swap the garlic

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, thyme, parsley, clove):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Garlicthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, nutmeg, ginger, thyme, parsley, 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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes