Name: Beef Steak Pie
Ingredients: 2 lb steak (beef or rump); 2 tablespoons flour; pepper; coarse sea salt; 1 pint stock or water; puff pastry

Why it works: Beef and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Beef Steak Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

Cut the steak into pieces suitable for serving.
Remove all fat and sinew from the meat.
Mix flour, pepper, and salt on a plate.
Roll each piece of meat in the flour mixture and place in a pie dish.

Bake and serve

Add stock or water to the dish.
Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

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.

Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,677 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Beef and flour 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

Steak: Provides the meat that becomes tender during the long, slow cooking in the pie.
Flour: Coats the meat and thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy as the pie bakes.
Stock or water: Supplies the liquid that cooks the beef and forms the gravy under the pastry.
Puff pastry: Forms a flaky, golden crust that bakes over the top of the filling.

“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.