Why it works: Sauce and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,087 recipes. Both carry decanoic acid, which smells soapy, waxy. The science ↓
Small Raised Mutton Pies
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 filling
Prepare the béchamel sauce.
Boil the fowls until cooked, then shred the meat.
Mix the shredded fowl with mutton and béchamel sauce.
Assemble and bake
Roll out the pastry and line small pie tins.
Fill the pastry with the meat mixture.
Cover with pastry lids and seal the edges.
Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.
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.
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Sauce + muttontop 25% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,087 recipes
Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Fowls
- Provide the main cooked meat that forms the bulk of the filling.
- Béchamel sauce
- Adds moisture and creaminess, binding the shredded meat into a cohesive filling.
- Mutton
- Contributes savoury meat flavour and body to the filling.
- Pastry
- Forms the structure that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
The step that matters
Sealing the pastry edges. If the edges are not sealed firmly, juices and steam can escape during baking, leaving the filling dry and the pie prone to leaking.
“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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