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Sea Pie

Sea Pie is a stew of beef, onion, carrot, covered with a suet crust and simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,555 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the beefsteak into thin slices about 2 inches square.

  2. Place the slices in a shallow stewpan, season with salt and pepper, and barely cover with boiling water.

  3. Cover with a lid and simmer gently.

  4. Slice the carrot thinly and chop the onion into small pieces, then add them to the meat.

  5. Prepare the suet crust as directed and roll it into a round slightly smaller than the top of the stewpan.

Cook and serve

  1. After simmering for 1 hour, place the crust on top of the meat, replace the lid, and continue cooking for 1½ hours.

  2. Once done, cut the crust into 4 pieces and carefully remove them from the stewpan to a plate.

  3. Arrange the meat and vegetables neatly on a hot dish and place the crust on top.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  2. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 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).

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

What each ingredient does

Beefsteak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, gentle simmering.
Suet crust
Forms a steamed, dumpling-like topping that absorbs the cooking juices and holds the dish together.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the cooking liquid.
Carrot
Adds mild sweetness and color while softening in the stew.

The step that matters

Simmering the meat gently. Gentle simmering with only barely enough water lets the beef tenderize slowly without toughening. A hard boil would seize the muscle fibers and make the meat chewy.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, 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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