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Mutton Pie

A savory pie filled with mutton, kidneys, and onions, encased in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Pie

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 gravy

  1. Remove the bones from the mutton and place them in 1 pint of water.

  2. Cook the bones in water for 30 minutes.

Assemble the pie

  1. Cut the mutton and kidneys into small pieces.

  2. Mix the meat with flour, salt, pepper, and minced onion.

  3. Place the mixture into a deep pie dish with the gravy from the bones.

  4. Cover with pastry.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Serve hot.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 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

Mutton
Provides the main meat and rich flavour that the pie is built around.
Kidneys
Add a deeper, more savoury meaty flavour to the filling.
Flour
Thickens the juices from the meat into a gravy that holds the filling together.
Pastry
Forms the covering that seals in the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours. The meat must cook through slowly while the pastry browns evenly. Long, moderate heat tenderises tough cuts like mutton and lets the flour-thickened juices set into a gravy rather than leaking out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, pepper. 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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