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Sea Pie

A pie of steak and vegetables baked in a suet crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the steak into pieces.

  2. Cut the celery, onions, carrot, and turnip into small pieces.

  3. Season the meat and vegetables with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Put the seasoned meat and vegetables into a large saucepan.

  5. Cover the contents with water.

  6. Simmer gently over the side of the fire.

Make the suet crust

  1. Chop the suet finely.

  2. Mix the chopped suet with flour and baking powder.

  3. Add cold water to the mixture to form a stiff paste.

  4. Roll the paste out to the size of the saucepan.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the crust over the meat and vegetables.

  2. Simmer gently for about two hours or until the meat is tender.

  3. Remove the crust with a fish-slice.

  4. Serve the meat and vegetables on a hot dish, placing the crust pieces around them.

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. Celery + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Celery + turniptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Steak
Becomes tender during long gentle simmering, giving the pie its main body and savoury flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the stiff suet paste that holds the crust together.
Suet
Adds fat to the crust, keeping it rich and tender as it cooks.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the paste, helping the crust rise and lighten.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the simmering liquid as they cook.
Celery
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the simmering meat and broth.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Gentle heat lets the collagen in the steak slowly break down into tender meat without toughening it. Boiling vigorously makes the meat tough and can break up the vegetables.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, 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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