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Lamb Pasty

A pastry-wrapped lamb dish baked with suet and spices, finished with vinegar, egg yolks, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lamb Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Bone the lamb and cut it into four pieces.

  2. Place the beef suet at the bottom of a pastry dish.

  3. Season the lamb with pepper, salt, thyme, nutmeg, cloves, and mace.

Assemble and bake

  1. Lay the seasoned lamb on top of the suet, making a high border around it.

  2. Cover with the sheet of pastry and seal it.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked through.

  4. Once baked, add vinegar, beaten egg yolks, and gravy.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the meat filling that becomes tender and savoury as it cooks through.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the lamb moist and rich during baking.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and forms a sealed crust that bakes golden.
Eggs
Beaten yolks add richness and help the pastry brown and set.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich meat and fat.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the pasty, so the filling cooks through in moist heat rather than drying out. Gaps let juices leak and the crust can burst or dry in the oven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, pepper, thyme, nutmeg, clove, egg):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, pepper, thyme, nutmeg, clove, egg. 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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