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Sea Pie

A suet crust pie filled with beef, vegetables, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,677 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the suet crust

  1. Finely shred the suet, chopping it with a knife used as a lever and dusting a little flour over it when it gets sticky, until it resembles sifted bread crumbs.

  2. Rub the suet into the flour.

  3. Add salt and baking powder.

  4. Mix in enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

Cook

  1. Roll out the paste to fit the saucepan.

  2. Lay it over the beef.

  3. Cover with a lid and simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  4. Occasionally run a knife around the edges to prevent burning.

Serve

  1. Once cooked, place the meat and vegetables on a dish.

  2. Cut the suet crust into quarters and lay them on top.

  3. Pour gravy over everything and serve.

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. Flour + beeftop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and beef barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Suet
Melts during cooking to make the crust tender and rich, and keeps it moist.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust once mixed with water into a paste.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the crust rise and lighten as it cooks.
Beef
Provides the main savoury flavour of the dish, cooked slowly beneath the crust.

The step that matters

Mix in enough cold water to form a stiff paste. Too much water makes the crust wet and sticky, while too little leaves it dry and crumbly. A stiff paste gives a crust that holds its shape while steaming gently over the meat.

“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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