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Pie, Squab, or Devonshire

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pie, Squab, or Devonshire

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Peel, core, and slice the baking apples.

  3. Chop the onions very small.

  4. Line a deep dish with puff pastry.

  5. Layer the apples in the dish, sprinkle with sugar and some chopped onions.

  6. Season the apples.

  7. Add a layer of seasoned lean mutton chops, more onions, and repeat the layering until the dish is full.

  8. Cover the dish with pastry and bake until golden brown.

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. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Onion + muttontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

  3. Apple + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,206 recipes

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

  4. Apple + muttontop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together278 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + muttontop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, sugar, mutton. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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