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Sea Pie

A pie made with meat, vegetables, and a suet and flour crust, simmered for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. In a medium-sized stew pan, combine the meat, carrot, turnip, and onion, then season with pepper and salt.

  2. Add enough water to cover the meat and vegetables and bring to a boil over medium heat.

Make the paste

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour and suet, then add a pinch of salt and baking powder and mix well.

  2. Gradually add cold water to form a paste, then roll it out into a round shape to fit the stew pan.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the rolled paste on top of the meat and vegetables, cover with a lid, and simmer gently for 1.5 hours.

  2. Carefully remove the paste, serve the meat and vegetables, and place the paste on top before serving.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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

Flour
Forms the paste that wraps the dish and gives it a sturdy, bready body.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the paste rich and tender as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the paste rises and turns lighter.
Meat
Provides the savory base of the stew, becoming tender during slow simmering.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently under the paste. A rapid boil can toughen the meat and make the liquid cloudy, while gentle simmering slowly breaks down connective tissue. Keeping the lid on traps steam so the paste cooks through evenly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, carrot, turnip, 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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