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Savoury Pie Paste

A meat pie with a suet, dripping, and lard pastry, filled with seasoned beef and optional potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Savoury Pie Paste

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.

Make the pastry

  1. In a bowl, combine beef suet, dripping, lard, and flour, making a well in the center.

  2. Gradually add water and mix to form a dough, then knead until smooth.

  3. Roll the dough to ¼ inch thick and cut a 2-inch wide band for the pie dish edge.

Assemble the pie

  1. Wet the edge of the pie dish and place the band around it.

  2. Layer thinly sliced meat in the dish, seasoning with salt, pepper, parsley, bay leaf, and thyme.

  3. If needed, add thick slices of potatoes on top of the meat.

  4. Pour in a little water or broth, then cover with the top crust, sealing the edges.

  5. Trim and decorate the edges, then brush with beaten egg and cut a hole in the top.

Bake

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Thyme + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the pie together.
Beef suet
Adds fat that makes the pastry rich and short in texture.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and flaky.
Dripping
Adds savory fat that enriches the pastry flavor and tenderness.
Egg
Brushed on the crust to promote browning and a glossy finish.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges of the pie. Sealing the top crust to the band keeps the juices and steam inside while baking, so the filling cooks through and stays moist.

Swap the potato

The recipe marks potato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, flour, pepper, parsley, thyme, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, flour, pepper, parsley, thyme, egg. 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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