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Beef Steak Pie with Oysters

A savory pie of beef steak and oysters baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Beef Steak Pie with Oysters

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 the filling

  1. Cut the steak into pieces measuring 1.5 by 2.5 inches.

  2. Season the meat with salt, pepper, cayenne, and lemon juice.

  3. If desired, add chopped parsley to the mixture.

  4. If the oysters are large, cut them up; if small, increase the quantity.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the seasoned meat in a pie dish.

  2. Pour the oyster liquor and enough stock or gravy to cover the meat.

  3. If needed, stew the trimmings of the steak with the oyster gills for extra flavor.

  4. Cover the pie with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Rump steak
Provides the main body of the pie and becomes tender during the long, slow cooking.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that melts into the filling and seasons the gravy.
Oyster liquor
Adds salty, concentrated sea flavour and moisture to the stock covering the meat.
Pastry
Seals the filling and browns in the oven, adding a crisp, golden top.

The step that matters

Covering the pie with pastry and baking. Baking at 400°F until golden brown must cook the beef through while the pastry sets and browns. Too short a bake leaves tough meat, and too long dries the filling.

“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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