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Meat Pie

A savory pie with a filling of round steak, onion, and potatoes, topped with a flour-based crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Meat Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Cover the round steak with water in a pot and cook slowly until tender.

  2. When the steak is half done, add the sliced onion and diced potatoes.

  3. Thicken the mixture with flour.

  4. Season the mixture with salt.

  5. Transfer the filling to an earthenware dish.

Make the crust and bake

  1. Mix 3 cups of flour, baking powder, shortening, and salt for the crust.

  2. Add enough sweet milk to moisten the crust mixture.

  3. Roll the crust out to fit the dish.

  4. Cover the filling with the rolled-out crust.

  5. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Round steak
Provides the meat base, which becomes tender through slow, moist cooking.
Potatoes
Add starch and body to the filling as they cook down.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the filling.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy-like filling.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust, giving it body when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and turns light.

The step that matters

Cooking the steak until tender before assembling. Round steak is a lean, tough cut that needs long, slow, moist cooking for its connective tissue to break down. If the meat is not fully tender before the pie is baked, it stays chewy, because the oven time is too short to soften it.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, flour, milk. 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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