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Sea Pie

A suet crusted meat pie filled with sliced steak, onions, carrot, turnip, and seasoned with pepper and salt.

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the buttock steak into thin pieces.

  2. Peel the onions and slice them as thinly as possible.

  3. Wash, scrape and slice the carrot.

  4. Peel and slice the turnip.

  5. Season the meat slices with pepper and salt.

  6. Layer the meat in a 2-quart saucepan, sprinkling some vegetables between layers.

  7. Add enough cold water to just cover the meat.

Cook the filling

  1. Bring the saucepan to a boil.

  2. Reduce to a simmer.

Make the crust

  1. Remove the skin from the suet and chop it finely.

  2. Sprinkle a little flour over the suet to prevent sticking.

  3. In a bowl, mix ¾ lb flour with ¼ teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon baking powder.

  4. Rub the chopped suet into the flour mixture.

  5. Add enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  6. Flour a board and turn the paste out onto it.

  7. Roll out the paste to fit the size of the saucepan.

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

Buttock steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow simmering in the pie.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste that holds the pie crust together.
Suet
Adds fat that makes the crust short and rich as it is rubbed into the flour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the paste so the crust rises and becomes lighter.
Onions
Adds sweetness and savory depth as they soften in the filling.

The step that matters

Rub the chopped suet into the flour mixture. The suet must be evenly distributed and cold so it coats the flour particles, keeping the paste short and tender rather than tough.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, pepper, flour. 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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