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Raised Beef Steak Pie

A savory pie filled with sautéed beef steak, oysters, and a buttery pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the beef

  1. Cut the skin from the fat of the beef steaks and beat them with a chopper.

  2. Cut the steaks into medium-sized pieces and sauté them in fresh butter with pepper, salt, lemon juice, and chopped eschalots until half cooked.

  3. Remove the beef from heat and let it cool.

Prepare the oysters

  1. Blanch the oysters, strain them, and reserve the oyster liquor.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and place a layer of steak at the bottom of a pie dish.

  2. Add a layer of oysters on top of the steak, then alternate layers until all ingredients are used.

  3. Cover the pie with pastry, decorate it, and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

  4. Before serving, pour in a mixture of oyster liquor and ketchup.

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. Oyster + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steaks
Provide the main meaty filling, which firms and browns when sautéed in butter.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and helps brown the beef as it sautés.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and a soft, tender texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that browns in the oven.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the oyster liquor poured in before serving.

The step that matters

Sautéing the steak until half cooked. Beef cooked only partly keeps its juices and does not toughen during baking, while overcooking it at this stage leaves it dry and tough once the pie bakes.

“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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