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Cold Beef and Tomato Pie

A pie made with cold boiled beef, tomatoes, stock, egg, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Beef and Tomato Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the tomatoes and cut the beef into small pieces, removing skin and gristle.

  2. Arrange the tomatoes and beef in alternating layers in a pie dish.

Add the custard and pastry

  1. Beat the egg and mix it with the stock, then pour over the layers (not too full).

  2. Line the sides of the dish with pastry, covering the edges well.

  3. Arrange strips of pastry diagonally over the top and mark the edges neatly.

Bake

  1. Glaze with egg or milk and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 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.

  1. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,448 recipes

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

  4. Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the savoury meat body of the filling, which is already cooked and only needs gentle heating.
Tomatoes
Add moisture and acidity that brighten the rich meat and soften during baking.
Egg
Beaten into the stock, it sets as the filling bakes, binding the layers together.
Pastry
Forms the lining and top crust that enclose the filling and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Do not overfill the dish. The egg and stock mixture expands and bubbles as it heats. Filling only to the stated level leaves room for this so it does not overflow or spill over the pastry edge.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, egg, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, egg, parsley, pepper. 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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