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Mutton Pies

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Mutton Pies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  2. Cut the mutton into small dice.

  3. Fry the mutton gently in the butter with the eschalot, parsley, pepper, and salt for about 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour, then add the gravy and cool the mixture on a plate.

  5. For the pastry, mix the flour and salt in a bowl, then add cold water to form a stiff dough.

  6. Roll the dough out to ½ inch thick, spread a third of the butter in small pieces, and sprinkle with a little flour.

  7. Fold the edges into the center, form into a ball, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

  8. Roll out again, add half the remaining butter, fold, and refrigerate for another 30 minutes.

  9. Repeat with the last of the butter, then roll out twice more to ¼ inch thick.

  10. Cut into rounds the size of a breakfast cup.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, butter, flour, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, butter, flour, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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