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Meat Pies

A savory pie filled with strips of steak, kidney, onion, parsley, and seasoned flour, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Pies

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the steak into narrow strips, 2 inches long.

  2. Cut a small piece of fat for each strip and a small piece of kidney.

  3. Dip each strip in seasoned flour.

  4. Fold in some kidney, chopped onion, and parsley, then roll lightly.

Fill and bake

  1. Fill these rolls loosely into a pie dish, building high in the center, then cover.

  2. Bake for 1 hour.

Add the pastry and finish

  1. Make pastry (see Pastries) and create a strip for the edge.

  2. Cover the pie with pastry.

  3. Flake the edges.

  4. Decorate with a veined circle of leaves and a fringe.

  5. Brush with egg.

  6. Bake for 1 hour.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 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

Buttock steak
Forms the main meaty body of the filling and becomes tender with long, slow baking.
Kidney
Adds a rich, deep meaty flavour and a firm, slightly chewy texture to the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the meat moist and carries flavour through the long bake.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aroma as it cooks into the filling.
Flour
Coats the strips so the juices thicken slightly around the meat.
Coombs' flour for pastry
Builds the pastry structure that holds the lid and edge together while baking.

The step that matters

Fill the dish loosely, building high in the center. Loosely packed rolls let heat reach the middle so the meat cooks through evenly. Packing them tightly can leave the centre undercooked and the juices unable to thicken properly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, 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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Mince Filling 11Mince 10Cold 7French 7Crust 5Pastry 5 See all 92 →

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