Skip to main content
Main

Meat Pies

A savory pie made with marinated beef or mutton, sugar, port wine, vinegar, spices, and butter, baked with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Meat Pies

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Bone the beef or mutton after hanging for several days.

  2. Beat the meat well with a rolling pin.

  3. Rub the meat with sugar.

  4. Pour port wine and vinegar over the meat.

  5. Let it marinate for 5 days and nights.

  6. Wash and dry the meat thoroughly.

  7. Season the meat with pepper, Jamaica pepper, nutmeg, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the meat in a dish.

  2. Spread butter over the meat.

  3. Cover the edges with pie crust.

  4. Seal with a thick top crust.

  5. Bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) for about 2 hours.

Make the gravy

  1. Set the bones in a pan with just enough water to cover them.

  2. Add a glass of port, pepper, and salt to make gravy.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  3. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Port wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Beef + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together626 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or mutton
Forms the main body of the pie and is the meat that is tenderised and flavoured.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and aroma, and its acidity helps tenderise the meat during marinating.
Vinegar
Its acidity helps break down meat fibres during the long marinade.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the meat brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, keeping the meat moist as it bakes.
Pie crust
Encloses the meat, trapping moisture and forming the sealed pie shell.

The step that matters

Marinating the meat for 5 days and nights. The acidic port and vinegar slowly break down tough meat fibres. Too short a marinade leaves the meat tough, while the meat must stay cold throughout to stay safe.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sugar, port wine, vinegar, pepper, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sugar, port wine, vinegar, pepper, butter. 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.

More meat pie recipes

Mince Filling 11Mince 10Cold 7French 7Crust 5Pastry 5 See all 92 →

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes