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Lamb Pie

A savory pie with stewed lamb, potatoes, turnips, celery or cauliflower, and a butter‑flour crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and celery are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,418 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Lamb Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut lamb cutlets into 3‑inch square pieces and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Stew the lamb in a little water for 30 minutes.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix 1 pound of butter with 1 pound of flour, adding water gradually to form a dough.

  2. Roll out the dough, making the upper crust the thickest.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the stewed lamb with its gravy in a pie dish.

  2. Add blades of mace, sliced potatoes, boiled turnips, and chopped boiled celery or cauliflower.

  3. Dot with pieces of butter and season with nutmeg.

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. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb cutlets
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender through slow stewing in water.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the crust and gives a tender, flaky texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that thickens the filling as it cooks.
Turnips
Add mild sweetness and a soft, tender texture to the filling.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, butter, flour, potato, turnip, celery):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, butter, flour, potato, turnip, celery. 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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