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Raised Beef-steak Pie

A pie filled with simmered beef, cayenne pepper, salt, butter, lemon juice, optional oysters and catsup, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Raised 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

  1. Simmer the beef with cayenne, salt, and butter for 30 minutes.

  2. Prepare a raised pie crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once the beef is cool, layer it in the crust with oysters, lemon juice, and catsup.

  2. Seal the pie by pinching the edges tightly.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Turn out the pie and serve.

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

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

  3. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the savory filling, becoming tender and flavorful as it simmers.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and moisture into the beef.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich beef and balances its flavor.
Raised pie crust
Provides the sturdy shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Let the beef cool before layering it in the crust. Hot filling softens the raw pastry, making it soggy and hard to seal, and it can melt the butter out before baking sets the 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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