Skip to main content
Main

Raised Beef-steak Pie

A pie filled with simmered beef, optional oysters, lemon juice, and catsup, topped with a raised crust.

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

Why it works: Lemon and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Raised 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

  1. Cut the beef into pieces and simmer for 30 minutes with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter, adding eschalots if desired.

  2. Prepare a raised crust for the pie.

Assemble and bake

  1. Once the beef is cold, layer it with oysters, lemon juice, and catsup if using.

  2. Cover the pie, pinching the edges tightly to secure the filling.

  3. Bake the pie at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown, then turn it out to serve.

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. Lemon + sagetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  5. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef
Forms the main filling and provides the savoury body of the pie.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the simmered meat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and oysters.

The step that matters

Pinching the edges tightly. A tight seal keeps juices and steam inside the filling while it bakes; a loose seal lets liquid leak out and the filling dry or boil over.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, pepper, butter, oyster, lemon, onion, bread):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, pepper, butter, oyster, lemon, onion, bread. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesRoast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipes