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Beef Steak Pie

A pie filled with small pieces of beef steak, seasoned with salt and pepper, and baked with crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and port wine work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 570 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Beef 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Lay a thin crust on the sides of a pie dish.

  3. Cut the prime meat into small pieces, about 2-3 inches long and 1-1.5 inches wide.

  4. Season the meat with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Add enough water or gravy to nearly fill the dish.

  6. Top with a crust about ¾ inch thick.

Bake

  1. Bake for 2 hours.

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. Mushroom + port winetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,423 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Oyster + mushroomtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Meat + oystertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Prime meat (rump or skirt steak)
Provides the main body of the pie, becoming tender during the long, slow bake.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and forms a sealed top that traps steam and moisture.
Water or gravy
Adds moisture to the dish so the meat cooks gently and stays juicy.

“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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