Skip to main content
Main

Beefsteak Fie

A baked dish of rolled beefsteak pieces in pie crust with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Beefsteak Fie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the steak

  1. Beat the steaks lightly and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Spread bits of butter over the surface of the steaks and dredge with flour.

  3. Roll the steaks up and cut into 2-inch pieces.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a tin basin with pie crust and place the steak pieces inside.

  2. Nearly fill the basin with water and add a piece of butter, dredged in flour, along with additional pepper and salt.

  3. Lay skewers across the basin and roll out a top crust, cutting a slit in the center.

  4. Pinch the top and side crust together around the edge using floured fingers.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

Steaks
Provide the meat that becomes tender and flavorful as the pie cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and moisture through the filling and crust.
Flour
Dredging the steak thickens the juices around the meat into a light gravy.
Pie crust
Forms the enclosing shell that holds the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Pinch the top and side crust together. A tight seal keeps the juices inside the pie so the filling stays moist and thickens rather than leaking out during baking.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes