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Mutton Pie

A pie filled with sliced cold roast mutton, gravy, currant jelly, and seasonings, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,379 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mutton Pie

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer the sliced cold roast mutton in a pie dish and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Add the cold gravy and currant jelly. If there isn't enough gravy, add a little water and butter.

  3. Dredge in a little flour.

  4. Cover with pie crust, rice crust, or potato crust.

Bake

  1. Bake for 45 minutes.

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. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

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

  4. Flour + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Cold roast mutton
Forms the main filling and provides the meat flavour and substance of the pie.
Cold gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour so the meat does not dry out while baking.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity that balances the rich meat and gravy.
Flour
Dredging lightly thickens the gravy so the filling sets rather than running.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the gravy, improving flavour and mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Dredge in a little flour. Flour dusted over the meat and gravy thickens the juices as they heat. Too little leaves a runny filling under the crust, while too much makes it pasty.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter, flour, rice. 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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