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Mutton Pie with Potato Crust

A savory pie of mutton topped with a crust of mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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, then mash them with milk, butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Line a deep dish with the mashed potatoes.

Fill and top

  1. Season the cold mutton or lamb with salt and pepper, then fill the dish with the meat.

  2. Dot the top with lumps of butter.

  3. Cover with a layer 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 baking dish.

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 base and crust that bakes to a golden brown top.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness to the mashed potatoes, keeping the crust smooth.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the mash and melts over the top to aid browning.
Mutton or lamb
Provides the savory meat filling that the potato layers enclose.

The step that matters

Covering the meat with mashed potato. The mash should fully seal the meat so the filling stays moist and the top can brown evenly in the oven.

“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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