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Beef-steak Pie

A pastry-covered beef steak pie with optional oysters, onions, and mushrooms, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Beef-steak Pie

Why it works: Onion and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,626 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Beef-steak Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA fierce oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fierce oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the beef

  1. Trim off the coarse skin from the steak and cut away any tough parts.

  2. If the beef is not tender, gently beat it with a rolling pin until the fibers break.

  3. Slice the beef into pieces half the size of your hand and place them in a dish lined with pastry.

  4. Season the meat with salt, pepper, or cayenne.

  5. Add enough water to create gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the dish with pastry.

  2. Brush the edges with egg or cold water to seal.

  3. Trim the edges and cut a small slit in the center of the cover.

  4. Decorate the pie as desired.

  5. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour and 20 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long baking and gravy-forming process.
Puff pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the meat and bakes into a crisp, flaky top and base.
Egg
Brushed on the edges to seal the pastry and promote golden browning.
Water
Creates the gravy that keeps the meat moist during baking.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry edges. If the edges are not sealed well, steam and gravy can escape during baking, leaving the filling dry and the crust soggy or underbaked.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg, oyster, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg, oyster, mushroom. 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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