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Steak Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed steak, onions, and hard‑boiled eggs, topped with pastry and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Steak 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. Dust the steak pieces with flour and fry them until nicely browned.

  2. Place the fried steak in a stewpan with enough water for the desired gravy.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the chopped onion and bay leaf.

  4. Stew for 1 to 2 hours until the meat is tender.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with pastry and place the cooked meat inside.

  2. Add the sliced hard boiled eggs and pour the gravy over the meat.

  3. Dust a little flour on top and add small pieces of butter.

  4. Cover with pastry and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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 + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Rump or beefsteak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow stewing.
Flour
Dusting helps the steak brown and lightly thickens the gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the filling and pastry top.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a mild, rich flavour to the filling.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma to the gravy as it stews.

The step that matters

Brown the steak before stewing. Frying the floured steak until nicely browned builds deep, savoury flavour through the Maillard reaction, which the gravy then carries. Pale meat gives a flat-tasting pie.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, egg, butter. 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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