Name: Devonshire Squab Pie
Ingredients: mutton chops or mutton; onions; pepper; coarse sea salt; sugar; ½ cup water; apples; potatoes; pie crust

Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devonshire Squab Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble the pie

Layer mutton chops or mutton at the bottom of a pie dish.
Sprinkle onions, pepper, coarse sea salt, sugar, and water over the meat.
Thinly slice apples and potatoes, and layer them on top of the meat.
Cover the sides and top of the dish with pie crust.

Bake

Bake until well cooked, about 2 hours.

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.

Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Apple + potatotop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Mutton + peppertop 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

Mutton: Provides the main meat filling that becomes tender during long, slow baking.
Apples: Add sweetness and moisture, softening as they bake beneath the crust.
Potatoes: Add starch and body to the filling as they cook through in the pie.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling, trapping steam and moisture inside the dish while it bakes.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, pepper, sugar, potato):

Limefits better
Lemonfits better
Mangofits better
Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, pepper, sugar, potato. 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.