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Lamb Pie

A savory pie filled with lamb, sliced kidneys, and seasoned with salt and pepper, topped with pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lamb and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,165 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Lamb Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the lamb

  1. Remove fat and bones from the lamb.

  2. Boil the bones to make gravy.

  3. Cut the lamb into pieces suitable for serving.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the lamb pieces in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle each layer with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Add a few slices of kidney.

  4. Half fill the dish with stock or water.

  5. Cover the dish with pastry.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

Finish with gravy

  1. Strain and season the stock made from the bones.

  2. Pour the seasoned stock into the pie just before serving.

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. Lamb + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow baking in the pie.
Lamb's or sheep's kidneys
Adds a rich, savoury flavour to the filling.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a crisp top.

The step that matters

Pour the seasoned stock into the pie just before serving. Adding the stock after baking keeps it hot and fresh, while pouring it in too early can make the pastry soggy from below. Straining the bone stock first removes fragments so the gravy stays smooth.

“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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