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Common Mutton Pie

A savory pie filled with mutton, seasoned with salt and pepper, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Common Mutton Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish.

  3. Line the dish with half the rolled‑out pastry.

Fill

  1. Evenly layer the mutton in the dish.

  2. Sprinkle the mutton with salt and pepper.

  3. Pour cold water into the dish until it is an inch from the top.

Cover and bake

  1. Roll out the remaining pastry to cover the pie.

  2. Wet the edges of the pastry with cold water or egg white.

  3. Seal the pastry securely.

  4. Trim the excess pastry close to the rim.

  5. Cut a small slit in the center of the pastry.

  6. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + muttontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the pastry structure that holds the filling and bakes into a crisp case.
Suet or butter and lard
Fat that makes the pastry short and tender by coating flour particles.
Mutton
Provides the meat filling, which becomes tender and flavorful during the long bake.
Cold water
Added under the top crust to create steam and keep the meat moist as it cooks.

The step that matters

Seal the pastry securely. If the edges are not wet and firmly sealed, steam cannot build inside the pie and juices may leak out, leaving the filling dry and the crust soggy at the rim.

“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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