Name: Devonshire Squab Pie
Ingredients: 2 pounds mutton chops; 2 pounds sour apples; Sugar to taste; Ground allspice to taste; Salt to taste; Pepper to taste; 1 finely chopped onion; For the crust: flour, butter, and water (to make a standard pie crust); ¼ pint gravy or water

Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Devonshire Squab Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Cut the mutton chops short and trim excess fat.
Peel, core, and slice the sour apples.

Assemble the pie

In a pie dish, layer some apples with a little sugar and a sprinkle of ground allspice.
Add a layer of mutton chops, seasoning with salt, pepper, and chopped onion.
Continue layering apples and meat until all ingredients are used.
Prepare a standard pie crust and line the edges of the dish, covering the top.
Add ¼ pint of gravy or water to the pie.

Bake

Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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.

Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together6,395 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Allspice + flourtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,302 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops: Provide the main meat filling, which becomes tender during the long, slow bake.
Sour apples: Add tartness that balances the rich meat and sugar, and soften into the filling.
Flour: Forms the structure of the pastry crust that encloses the filling.
Butter: Adds fat to the pastry crust, giving it richness and a flaky, tender texture.

Swap the apple

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

Lemonfits better
Limefits better
Figfits better
Applethe original

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