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Meat Pies

A savory pie made with marinated beef or mutton, sugar, port wine, vinegar, butter, spices, and a thick crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Beat the boned meat with a rolling pin.

  2. Rub the meat with sugar and pour over port and vinegar.

  3. Let it marinate for 5 days in the refrigerator.

  4. Wash and dry the meat, then season it with pepper, Jamaica pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the meat in a dish and spread butter over it.

  2. Cover the edges with crust and top with a thick crust.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 2 hours.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Set the bones in a pan with just enough water to cover them and add port, pepper, and salt to make gravy.

  2. Pour the hot gravy into the pasty using a funnel after baking.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Beef + meattop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,533 recipes

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

  5. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Provides the meat that becomes tender and juicy during the long, slow cooking.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meat brown slightly at the surface.
Port wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the meat during marinating and flavours the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the meat moist as it bakes.

The step that matters

Pour the hot gravy into the pasty after baking. Gravy poured in after baking keeps the filling moist and avoids a soggy crust, and the gravy must be hot so it stays fluid and fills the cavity evenly.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, port wine, vinegar, butter, pepper, meat):

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, port wine, vinegar, butter, pepper, meat. 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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