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575 Beef Pot-Pie

A stew of roast beef and potatoes topped with a crust, baked until browned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

575 Beef Pot-Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Break the bones of the beef and cover with water.

  2. Simmer for 2-3 hours to make gravy, adding enough water to total 3 pints.

Make the stew

  1. In a gallon saucepan, combine the gravy with salt, pepper, chili sauce, beef, and potatoes.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add flour mixed with a little cold water.

  3. Prepare a baking powder dough or let bread dough rise.

  4. When the stew is boiling, add the crust on top, either whole with a center cut out or in strips.

  5. Cover and boil for 20 minutes, then remove the cover and brown in the oven for a few moments.

Serve

  1. To serve, place the crust upside down on a platter, lay the meat on it, and pour the gravy over.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sauce + flourtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. White pepper + potatotop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Beef + saucetop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,650 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Roast beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful as it simmers in the gravy.
Potatoes
Absorb gravy and soften during cooking, adding body and starch to the stew.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as it heats, giving it a smooth, coating consistency.
Baking powder dough or raised crust
Forms the topping that cooks and browns, giving the pie its bread-like crust.

The step that matters

Adding the crust to the boiling stew. The crust must go on while the stew is actively boiling so it cooks through on the surface and steams from below. Adding it to cool liquid can leave the dough soggy and underbaked.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, sauce, potato, flour):

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, sauce, potato, 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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