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Mutton Pie

A pie filled with sliced mutton, potatoes, and gravy, topped with crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 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 the mutton

  1. Cut the cold mutton into very thin slices if using the leg, or into thin cutlets if using the loin or neck.

Assemble the pie

  1. Place some mutton at the bottom of a pie dish and season with pepper, salt, mace, parsley, and herbs.

  2. Add a layer of sliced potatoes, then more mutton, repeating until the dish is full.

  3. Pour the gravy over the layers and cover with a pie crust.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Forms the savoury meat filling and provides most of the flavour of the pie.
Potatoes
Form starchy layers that absorb gravy and add body to the filling.
Gravy
Adds moisture so the layers stay juicy as the pie bakes.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a sealed top.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, mace, parsley, potato):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, mace, parsley, 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.

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