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Beef Steak Pie

A pie made with seasoned steak and mashed potato topping, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Steak Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak into pieces and season well with salt, pepper, and mace.

  2. Steam the steak in a bowl for 2 hours.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with mashed potatoes.

  2. Place the cooked steak in the dish and cover with more mashed potatoes.

  3. Smooth the top and mark it nicely.

  4. Brush the top with beaten egg yolk.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the pie is nicely browned.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,230 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,315 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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 meaty filling that becomes tender during long, gentle steaming.
Mashed potatoes
Form the crust layers that hold the filling and brown in the oven.
Egg yolk (in the method)
Brushed on top, it promotes a glossy, deeply browned surface when baked.

The step that matters

Steam the steak for 2 hours. Long, gentle steaming breaks down connective tissue in the steak, so it turns tender rather than tough. Cutting the pieces evenly helps them cook through at the same rate.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, lemon. 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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