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Raised Meat Pies

A pastry shell filled with seasoned minced beef, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,092 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Raised Meat Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the hot-water pastry

  1. Mince the suet small, then boil it in a pan and strain it.

  2. Mix the strained suet with the milk.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, adding a little salt.

  4. Pour the boiling mixture onto the flour.

  5. Mix to form a stiff dough.

Shape the pies

  1. Divide the dough, making one part twice as big as the other.

  2. Roll out the smaller piece for covers.

  3. Roll out the larger piece into 6 or 8 thick pieces.

  4. Shape the larger pieces into round shells, pressing down with a rolling pin and shaping with your thumb.

  5. Let the shells stand until firm.

  6. Fill with seasoned minced meat.

  7. Place the covers on top, leaving a hole in the center.

  8. Pinch the edges together, brushing with egg or water.

  9. Brush the tops with egg or water.

Bake and add the gravy

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Heat the stock.

  3. Add a pinch of gelatine.

  4. Pour it through the hole in the cover.

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

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 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. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

  5. Beef + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,759 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the stiff dough that holds the shell and cover shape.
Beef suet
Adds fat that gives the pastry richness and a tender, flaky-short texture.
Milk
Moistens the dough so it can be mixed and shaped.
Minced meat
Forms the savoury filling of the pie.
Egg
Brushed on the pastry to give the tops a golden, glossy browning.
Gelatine
Sets the poured gravy as it cools, helping it firm up inside the pie.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling mixture onto the flour. The liquid must be hot enough to melt and bind the fat with the flour; if it cools, the dough will be hard to mix and shape into shells.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, beef, milk, meat, pepper, egg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, beef, milk, meat, pepper, egg. 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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