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Sea Pie

A savory pie made with sliced steak, onions, carrot, turnip, suet crust, baked in a saucepan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sea Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the steak into thin pieces using a sharp knife.

  2. Peel and slice the onions as thin as possible.

  3. Wash, scrape, and peel the carrot and turnip, then slice them thinly.

  4. Season the meat slices with pepper and salt.

  5. Layer the meat in a two-quart saucepan, sprinkling some sliced vegetables between layers.

  6. Add enough cold water to just cover the meat.

  7. Bring the saucepan to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer.

Make the suet crust

  1. Chop the suet finely after removing any skin.

  2. Mix the flour with salt and baking powder in a basin.

  3. Rub the chopped suet into the flour with your hands.

  4. Add enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  5. Flour a board and turn the paste out onto it.

  6. Roll out the paste to fit the size of the saucepan.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover the meat with the rolled paste and let it simmer gently for 1.5 hours with the lid on.

  2. Check occasionally and run a knife around the edges to prevent sticking.

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. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 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

Buttock steak
Forms the main meaty filling that becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that becomes the suet crust covering the filling.
Suet
Adds fat that is rubbed into the flour, making the crust rich and tender.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lighten the crust so it rises and stays less dense.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften into the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the lid on and simmer gently. Gentle simmering breaks down the connective tissue in the steak slowly, so the meat turns tender. A hard boil toughens meat and can make the crust cook unevenly or stick to the pan.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, pepper, flour):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, pepper, 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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