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Meat Pie

A savory pie with beef skirt and bullock’s kidney, seasoned, wrapped in a stiff flour paste crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Meat 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. Cut the meat into small pieces.

  2. Mix the seasoning on a plate and dip the meat in it.

  3. Place the seasoned meat in a pie dish and pour in ½ cup of cold water.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Rub the dripping into the flour, then mix with water to form a stiff paste.

  3. Flour the board and rolling pin, then roll out the paste to ½ inch thick.

  4. Grease the edges of the dish and line it with narrow strips of paste.

  5. Wet the edges, place the top on, and press it down.

  6. Trim the edges neatly and crimp them with the back of a knife.

  7. Make a hole in the top and decorate as desired.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 1 hour at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Beef skirt
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender through slow baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste that becomes the pie crust.
Dripping
Adds fat that makes the crust short and rich in texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and lightens.

The step that matters

Forming the stiff paste. Rubbing the dripping into the flour coats the flour particles so less gluten forms, keeping the crust tender. Adding water gradually and stopping once a stiff dough forms prevents a tough, dense crust.

“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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