Skip to main content
Main

Paste for Meat Pies

A meat pie with a butter or lard paste crust, filled with seasoned beef and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Paste for Meat Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the paste

  1. Cut the butter, lard, or dripping into small pieces and mix with the flour gradually.

  2. Rub the mixture together with your hands and add cold water until it forms a smooth paste.

  3. Roll out the paste flat, fold it, and roll it out again three times.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the beef steak into pieces about four inches wide, removing gristle and skin.

  2. Mix the black pepper, cayenne, allspice, and salt; sprinkle this seasoning over the steak.

  3. Dredge the seasoned steak lightly with flour.

  4. Layer the seasoned steak in a pie dish, adding more seasoning and flour between layers.

  5. Pour the water or gravy and mushroom ketchup over the top.

Bake

  1. Cover with the prepared paste and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 1.5 hours.

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

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

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  4. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter, lard, or dripping
Rubbed into the flour to make the paste short and flaky as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste and coats the steak to help thicken the juices.
Beef steak
Provides the main meat filling, which becomes tender during the long, slow bake.
Water or gravy
Adds moisture that turns into savoury juices around the meat as it cooks.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury flavour to the filling and juices.

The step that matters

Rub the fat into the flour gradually. Fat coated in flour keeps the paste layers separate, so adding it in small pieces and rubbing it in lightly yields a flakier crust. Overworking warms the fat and makes the paste tough.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, beef, pepper, mushroom, ketchup):

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

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