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Small Mutton Pies

A pastry pie filled with shredded boiled fowl and minced mutton seasoned with besliemell, salt, pepper, and parsley.

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 ↓

Small Mutton Pies

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the filling

  1. Shred the boiled fowls and mix with minced mutton.

  2. Add besliemell, salt, pepper, and parsley to the meat mixture.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the pastry dough and cut into circles.

  2. Place a spoonful of the meat mixture on one half of each circle.

  3. Fold the pastry over and seal the edges with a fork.

  4. Brush the tops with melted butter and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20-25 minutes until golden.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Mutton + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,781 recipes

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

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Boiled fowls
Supply the bulk of the cooked filling, adding moisture and savoury body.
Minced mutton
Adds rich meat flavour and fat that keeps the filling juicy as it bakes.
Besliemell
Thick white sauce that binds the filling so it holds together inside the pastry.
Pastry dough
Forms the sealed casing that traps the filling and browns in the oven.
Butter
Brushed on top to promote browning and a golden, glossy crust.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not sealed firmly, the filling can leak and escape during baking, leaving the pies dry and the pastry soggy at the seam.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mutton, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits less well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mutton, pepper, butter. 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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