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Mutton Pie with Potato Crust

A mutton pie topped with a crust of mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mutton Pie with Potato Crust

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes with milk and butter, then season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Line a deep dish with the mashed potatoes.

Fill and assemble

  1. Season the cold mutton or lamb with pepper and coarse sea salt, then fill the dish with the meat.

  2. Dot the top with lumps of butter.

  3. Cover with a lid of mashed potatoes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the potatoes are golden brown.

  2. Serve in the baking dish.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the crust and lid, giving a soft interior and a golden, browned top.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the mashed potato and browns the top surface.
Milk
Loosens the mashed potatoes so they spread smoothly and stay moist.
Cold mutton or lamb
Forms the savoury meat filling that the potato crust encloses.

The step that matters

Mash the potatoes with milk and butter while they are hot. Potatoes become smooth and spreadable when mashed warm, as their starch is still soft. Cold or overworked potatoes turn gluey or stiff, which makes the crust hard to spread evenly over the filling.

“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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