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Paste for Hot Meat Pies, or Sen'e to Baste

A paste made from split peas, vegetables, and seasonings, used for hot meat pies or to baste.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Paste for Hot Meat Pies, or Sen'e to Baste

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Simmer the split peas and vegetables (carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, herbs, and celery) in water until tender.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve to achieve a creamy consistency.

  3. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, pimento, cloves, and cayenne pepper.

  4. If the soup is not thick enough, add a slice of bread or a little rice flour gradually.

Prepare the ragout

  1. For the ragout, cut the best parts of the meat into small pieces and rub with seasoning.

  2. Simmer the meat in a quart of the reserved liquor until tender.

Finish and serve

  1. Add mushroom catsup, walnut catsup, soy sauce, port wine, and mustard, and boil before serving.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Split peas
Break down during simmering to give the paste body and a creamy, thick texture.
Potatoes
Break down when simmered and sieved, adding starch that thickens the paste.
Onions
Soften and dissolve into the base, adding sweetness and savoury depth.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and body to the sieved base.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and aroma to the finished paste.
Rice flour
Thickens the liquid gradually when the paste is too thin.

The step that matters

Adding the bread or rice flour. Starch thickens as it heats, so adding it gradually and boiling briefly lets it set evenly without lumps or a gluey texture. Adding too much at once makes the paste stiff and pasty.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against peas, carrot, turnip, potato, onion, celery, 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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