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Mutton Pie with Tomatoes

A savory pie made with sliced tomatoes, cold mutton, and topped with rolled crackers, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton Pie with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pare and slice the tomatoes.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer half the tomatoes in a deep pie dish.

  2. Add a layer of cold mutton slices and sprinkle with flour, salt, and pepper.

  3. Top with the remaining tomatoes.

  4. Sprinkle the rolled crackers on top.

  5. Bake for 1 hour.

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. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Tomato + muttontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together452 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Tomato + flourtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Release juice that moistens the pie and gives it a bright, acidic flavor.
Cold mutton
Provides the savory, meaty filling that forms the body of the pie.
Flour
Thickens the tomato juices as they heat, so the filling does not run.
Rolled crackers
Toast and brown on top, adding a crisp, golden crust.

The step that matters

Bake the full hour. The mutton is already cooked, so the bake mainly heats the pie through. Flour thickens the juices only once they become hot, so cutting the time short can leave the filling runny.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, flour, pepper. 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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