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Lamb Pie, a Savory One

A savory lamb pie with bacon, onions, herbs, oysters, and a ragout, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg 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 Pie, a Savory One

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 the lamb

  1. Lard the pieces of lamb with small lardons of bacon.

  2. Season the lamb with salt, pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and bay leaf.

  3. Add pounded fat bacon, chopped onions, nutmeg, and sweet herbs to the lamb.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture into a pie crust.

  2. Bake for 1.5 hours at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Cut the pie open.

  4. Skim off excess fat.

  5. Pour in a ragout of oysters.

  6. 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,212 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the main meat, whose richness and fat carry the flavour of the filling.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty, savoury flavour that moistens the lean lamb during baking.
Oysters
Give the ragout a briny, savoury flavour that contrasts with the rich meat.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that encloses and holds the filling while it bakes.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and colour, and set to bind the filling when cooked.

The step that matters

Skim off excess fat. Rendered fat from the lamb and bacon pools on the surface. Removing the excess before serving keeps the filling from tasting greasy and lets the oyster ragout show through.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, oyster, egg, asparagus. 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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