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Squab Pie

A savory pie with mutton, apples, onions, and mushroom ketchup, baked with a gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Squab Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the neck of mutton into cutlets and place them in a pie dish.

  2. Season the cutlets well with coarse sea salt and pepper.

  3. Layer the sliced apples and onions over the meat, sprinkling with sugar.

  4. Half fill the dish with boiling water.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1½ hours.

  2. Before serving, pour the gravy out, skim off the fat, and add the mushroom ketchup.

  3. Season the gravy to taste and return it to the pie.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Neck of mutton
Provides the rich meat and fat that flavour the pie and gravy as it cooks.
Apples
Add tartness and sweetness that balance the rich meat and onions.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma as they soften and mingle with the meat juices.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds deep savoury, umami flavour to the finished gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the gravy before serving. The fat rendered from the mutton floats on the cooking liquid and can make the gravy greasy. Pouring off the liquid and skimming the fat before adding the mushroom ketchup gives a cleaner, better-balanced sauce.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, mushroom, ketchup, sugar, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, mushroom, ketchup, sugar, 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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