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Mutton Pie with Potato Crust

A mutton pie topped with a crust of mashed potatoes, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mutton Pie with Potato Crust

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the potato base

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender.

  2. Mash the potatoes with milk and butter.

  3. Season the mashed potatoes with salt and pepper.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a deep dish with the mashed potatoes.

  2. Season the cold mutton or lamb with salt and pepper.

  3. Fill the dish with the seasoned meat.

  4. Dot the top with lumps of butter.

  5. Cover the meat with a lid of mashed potatoes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the potatoes are golden brown.

  2. Serve in the dish it was baked in.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Pepper + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the starchy crust that mashes smoothly and browns on top.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potato crust.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the potatoes and melts over the topping for browning.
Mutton or lamb
Provides the savoury meat filling that gives the pie its main flavour.

The step that matters

Covering the meat with the mashed potato lid. The potato must be spread over the meat so no filling is exposed. Exposed meat can dry out or scorch in the oven, while a sealed lid keeps the filling moist and lets the top brown evenly.

“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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