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Mutton Pie

A savory pie with mutton, kidneys, parsley, pepper, salt, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

  1. Bone the mutton and cut it into evenly thick steaks, leaving minimal fat.

  2. Cut the kidneys and arrange them with the mutton in a pie dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Sprinkle the minced parsley, pepper, and salt over the meat.

  2. Pour in the gravy or water and cover with puff pastry.

  3. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour, or longer if the pie is large.

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

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Provides the meat and fat that give the filling its rich, savory flavor.
Kidneys
Add a deep, mineral-rich flavor and a tender, slightly firm texture to the filling.
Gravy or water
Supplies moisture that gently cooks the meat and forms the sauce in the pie.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp, golden crust that seals in the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Cut the mutton into evenly thick steaks. Even thickness lets the meat cook through at the same rate, so thin pieces do not dry out while thick ones are still underdone.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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