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A Savoury Lamb or Real Pie

A puff pastry lamb pie with lamb, sweetbreads, oysters, force meat balls, boiled asparagus, and a wine yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

A Savoury Lamb or Real Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Make a good puff pastry crust.

  2. Cut the lamb into pieces and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Lay the seasoned lamb in the crust with lamb-stones, sweetbreads, oysters, force meat balls, hard yolks of eggs, and boiled asparagus tops.

  4. Dot the filling with butter and cover with the lid.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Prepare the liquor by mixing red wine, grated nutmeg, and the yolks of 2-3 beaten eggs, stirring continuously until it boils.

  3. Pour the liquor into the pie and cover with the lid again.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Forms the main meat filling and gives the pie its savoury flavour.
Puff-paste crust
Forms a flaky, golden casing that holds the filling and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during baking.
Hard yolks of 2-3 eggs
Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth to the liquor poured into the pie.

The step that matters

Stirring the liquor until it boils. The beaten egg yolks in the liquor can curdle or scramble if they are overheated or left unstirred, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth sauce. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly so the mixture thickens gently.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, oyster, meat, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, oyster, meat, egg. 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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