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Mutton Pot Pie

A stew of mutton with dumplings made from flour and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the mutton

  1. Stew the mutton pieces slowly for 2 to 3 hours.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Make and cook the dumplings

  1. In the last 30 minutes, prepare dumplings by mixing baking powder with flour.

  2. Stir in water until the mixture is as stiff as biscuit dough.

  3. Drop the dumplings into the pot and do not uncover while boiling.

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. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mutton + flourtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (grass, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the starch structure of the dumplings, which sets as they cook.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the moist dough, helping the dumplings rise and become light.
Mutton
Provides the rich meat flavour that the stew and dumplings are built around.

The step that matters

Do not uncover the pot while the dumplings boil. Lifting the lid lets steam escape, so the temperature drops and the dumplings can turn heavy and gummy instead of light and fluffy. Steam trapped under the lid cooks the dough through.

“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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