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Lamb Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed lamb, onion, butter, and seasoning, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Lamb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Stew the lamb as you would beef steak.

  2. Add the minced onion and season to taste.

  3. Stir in the butter and thicken the mixture.

Bake

  1. Transfer to a baking dish.

  2. Cover with pie crust and bake 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 + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Lamb + oniontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,407 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  3. Lamb + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat base and rich savory flavor of the filling.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth as it softens in the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the thickened filling.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a golden top.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, butter):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, butter. 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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