Skip to main content

Lamb Pie

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

Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut lamb cutlets into 3-inch square pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Stew the lamb in ½ cup of water for 30 minutes.

  3. Prepare a dough with 1 pound of butter and 1 pound of flour, adding water gradually until it forms a dough.

  4. Roll out the dough, making the upper crust the thickest.

  5. Place the stewed lamb with its gravy in a pie dish.

  6. Add blades of mace, sliced potatoes, boiled turnips, and chopped boiled celery or cauliflower.

  7. Top with pieces of butter and season with nutmeg.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, butter, flour, potato, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, butter, flour, potato, turnip, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipes