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Beef Steak Pie

A pie filled with rolled beef steak strips, baked with pastry and glazed, served hot or cold with optional gelatin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 ↓

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 beef into thin strips, 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and pepper together, then dip each piece of beef into this mixture.

  3. Cut the fat into very small pieces and place a piece at the end of each beef strip, rolling them up into neat rounds.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the rolled beef in a small pie dish and pour in 2 tablespoons of water.

  2. Line the edges of the dish with flaky pastry, cover, and decorate the top.

  3. Brush the top with a beaten egg or milk.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

Serve

  1. When done, fill the pie with hot water or good stock.

  2. Fold a serviette around the dish and serve.

  3. If serving cold, add a little gelatine to the gravy and garnish with parsley.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Beef + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,866 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Beef steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavorful during the long, moist bake.
Flour
Dusting the beef helps thicken the gravy that forms in the dish.
Egg or milk
Brushed on top, it browns the pastry for a glossy golden finish.
Fat from beef
Melts during baking, adding moisture and richness to the meat.

The step that matters

Rolling the fat into the beef strips. Fat that is cut into very small pieces and tucked securely at the end of each strip melts slowly during baking, basting the meat and keeping it moist. Loosely placed fat may leak out and leave the meat drier.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Turmericfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, flour, egg. 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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