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Sea Pie

Sea Pie is a savory pie made with meat, vegetables, and a suet and flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stew

  1. Place the meat in a medium-sized stew pan and sprinkle the carrot, turnip, and onion over it.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and salt to taste, then pour in enough water to cover the meat and vegetables.

  3. Bring the stew pan to a boil over medium heat.

Make the suet paste

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour and finely chopped suet, rubbing them together.

  2. Add a pinch of salt and the baking powder, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add cold water to form a paste.

  4. Roll the paste out into a round shape to fit the stew pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolled paste on top of the meat and vegetables, cover with a lid, and let it stew gently for 1.5 hours.

  2. Carefully lift off the paste, dish the meat and vegetables, and place the paste on top before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Meat
Provides the main savoury flavour and substance of the stew as it simmers in water.
Flour
Forms the paste's structure, which holds together as it steams over the stew.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the paste tender and rich rather than tough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the paste rises and becomes lighter.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the broth as it softens.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on while the paste stews gently. Gentle, covered heat traps steam so the paste cooks through and rises, while a hard boil or lifting the lid can make it dense or soggy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, flour, pepper. 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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