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Beefsteak Pie

A pie of thinly sliced round steak and sheep kidneys, coated in flour, salt, pepper, baked with pastry and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak 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 oblong pieces and the kidneys into small pieces.

  2. Wash the kidneys and mix the flour, salt, and pepper together.

  3. Dip the pieces of beef into the flour mixture and roll a piece of kidney in each piece of beef.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill your dish with the beef and kidney, then add the water.

  2. Cover with pastry, placing a narrow strip around the edge of the dish.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  4. Stew the bones and pour the hot stock into the pie through the hole in the center.

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. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Round steak
Provides the main meat, becoming tender during the long baking time.
Sheeps' kidneys
Adds a rich, savoury flavour and firm texture to the filling.
Flour
Coats the meat, helping to thicken the juices into a richer gravy.

“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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