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Beefsteak and Oystee Pie

A savory pie with beefsteak, oysters, and a pastry crust, seasoned with pepper, sea salt, mace, and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Beefsteak and Oystee 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

  1. Gently beat the steak with a rolling pin.

  2. Season the steak with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Line a deep dish with pastry.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the meat and oysters in the dish.

  2. Add the oyster liquor, mace, and catsup.

  3. Cover with a top crust.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

  3. Oyster + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,910 recipes

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 main savory meat filling, which becomes tender as it cooks in the pie.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor that complements the beef in the filling.
Oyster liquor
Adds moisture and concentrated oyster flavor to the filling.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, oyster. 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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