Skip to main content
Main

Beef Steak Pie

A pie with thinly sliced steak and kidney, covered with a flour‑butter crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix 2 tablespoons of flour, 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt, and ½ teaspoon of black pepper.

  3. Dip the steak slices in the seasoning and layer them in a pie dish.

  4. Add a layer of kidney slices, seasoned, and repeat until the dish is full.

  5. Pour some water into the dish for gravy and pile the meat high in the center.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ lb. flour, ¼ lb. butter, and ½ teaspoon baking powder.

  2. Add ½ cup of water and half of the beaten egg to the flour mixture to form a stiff paste.

  3. Roll out the paste to about ¼ inch thick, fold it in thirds, and roll again.

Assemble and bake

  1. Wet the edge of the pie dish and place a narrow band of paste around it.

  2. Cover with the remaining paste, cut to size, notch the edges, and brush with the remaining egg.

  3. Make a large hole in the top and decorate with leaf‑shaped pieces of paste.

  4. Bake until golden brown.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Steak
Forms the main body of the pie and provides meaty flavor as it cooks.
Sheep's kidneys
Adds rich, deep meaty flavor to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the juices into gravy and helps the seasoning cling to the meat.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crust tender and flaky as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lighten the crust.
Egg
Brushed on top, it helps the crust brown to a golden color.

The step that matters

Forming the stiff paste and rolling it out. Working the butter into the flour and water without overmixing keeps the crust tender. Folding and rolling builds layers, so the crust bakes flaky instead of dense.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes