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Beef Steak and Oyster Pie

A pie of beef steaks and oysters, with a sauce of oyster liquor, cream, butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Beef Steak and Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the beef steaks without rolling them.

  2. Layer the steaks and oysters in a pie dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Stew the oyster liquor and beards with lemon peel, mace, and parsley.

  2. In a saucepan, boil the stew with cream and butter mixed with flour.

  3. Strain the sauce and pour it into the pie dish.

Bake

  1. Bake the pie until cooked through.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Provide the main meaty body and chewy texture of the pie filling.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that gives the pie its character.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, making it smooth and silky.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, oyster, lemon, parsley, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, oyster, lemon, parsley, cream, butter, flour. 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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