Name: Mutton Pie with Potato Crust
Ingredients: 4 medium potatoes; ¼ cup milk; 2 tablespoons butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste; 2 cups cooked mutton or lamb, cut into small pieces; 2 tablespoons butter for topping

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 crust

Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them with milk and butter. Season with salt and pepper.
Line a deep dish with the mashed potatoes.

Fill and bake

Season the mutton or lamb with salt and pepper, then fill the dish with the meat.
Dot the top with lumps of butter and cover with a lid of mashed potatoes.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the potatoes are golden brown.
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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,611 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).
Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,456 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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.
Mutton or lamb: Provides the savory, rich meat filling.
Butter: Adds fat for richer flavor and a smoother, golden-browned crust.
Milk: Moistens the mashed potatoes so they spread easily into a soft crust.

The step that matters

Browning the potato lid. The potato topping needs to bake until golden brown. Browning comes from surface starch and milk sugars reacting in dry heat, so the lid should be cooked until colored, not just heated 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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Mutton Pie with Potato Crust