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Beef Steak Pie

A pie filled with sliced steak, potatoes, onions, and a brown flour gravy, topped with crust and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

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 steak into strips 2 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Stew the steak with the bone in enough water to cover until partly cooked.

  3. Slice the cold boiled potatoes.

  4. Line a baking dish with pie paste.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer the meat in the dish with salt, pepper, and thinly sliced onion.

  2. Add a layer of sliced potatoes with bits of butter on top.

  3. Continue layering steak and potatoes until the dish is full.

  4. Thicken the gravy or broth with brown flour and pour it over the layers.

  5. Cover with a top crust, making a slit in the middle.

Bake

  1. Brush the crust with beaten egg and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Rump or flank steak
Provides the meat that becomes tender during stewing and baking.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy or broth so it binds the layers together.
Cold boiled potatoes
Form a starchy layer that soaks up gravy and adds body to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Egg
Brushed on the crust, it promotes browning and a glossy golden finish.

The step that matters

Thicken the gravy or broth with brown flour and pour it over the layers. Flour must be fully mixed into the liquid before pouring, or it clumps and the filling turns out lumpy or thin. The starch thickens as it heats, so the gravy sets around the meat and potatoes instead of pooling at the bottom.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, pepper, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, pepper, butter, flour, egg. 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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