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English Pot Pie

A savory pie with steak, carrots, turnip, onion, suet crust, cooked in a pot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

English Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Brown the meat

  1. Dust the steak pieces with flour.

  2. Add the fat to the heated iron kettle.

  3. Add the steak and brown the meat.

  4. Add the carrot, turnip, and onion.

  5. Stir briskly.

  6. Pour in the boiling water and season with salt.

  7. Bring to a boil.

  8. Reduce heat to simmer.

  9. Cover closely.

  10. Let cook.

Make the suet crust

  1. In a bowl, combine the suet, flour, and salt.

  2. Mix well.

  3. Make a hole in the center.

  4. Pour in the cold water.

  5. Mix quickly with a knife.

  6. Roll out the dough slightly larger than the kettle and 1 inch thick.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the dough over the meat and vegetables.

  2. Cover.

  3. Simmer for 1 hour.

  4. Cut the crust pie fashion.

  5. Serve around the meat.

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. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + carrottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,029 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, which browns to build savory flavor in the kettle.
Suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the crust tender and moist.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough and thickens the cooking liquid when dusted on the meat.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the broth.
Carrot
Contributes mild sweetness and body to the stew as it softens.
Turnip
Adds earthy flavor and a tender, soft texture after simmering.

The step that matters

Mix the dough quickly with a knife. Overworking cold-water dough develops gluten and makes the crust tough, so the dough should be mixed only until just combined.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, carrot, turnip. 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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