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To Make a Beef Steak Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed chuck steak, potatoes, and forced meat balls, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Make a Beef Steak Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a good oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Cut the chuck steak into pieces and stew it with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

  2. Add the juice of a lemon and stir until the liquid thickens.

  3. Cook a few small forced meat balls and halved potatoes in the stew.

Bake and serve

  1. Arrange the mixture in a pie dish as for a pigeon pie.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the potatoes are browned.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chuck steak
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during the long stewing.
Potatoes
Add starch and bulk, and brown on the surface in the oven.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich stew.

The step that matters

Stirring in the lemon juice until the liquid thickens. Acid and stirring change how the stew's liquid thickens and sets, so the filling should be watched closely rather than left unattended. Stirring keeps the thickening even and prevents lumps or scorching at the base of the pan.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, lemon, meat):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, nutmeg, lemon, meat. 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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