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Sheeps Head Pie

A savory pie made with boiled sheep's head, eggs, ham or bacon, seasoned, and baked with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,526 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Sheeps Head 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 head

  1. Wash the sheep's head thoroughly and boil until the bones shake out.

  2. Strain the stock from the head.

  3. Cut the head into small pieces and slice the ham or bacon.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pie dish, layer the head pieces, ham, and sliced eggs alternately.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and mixed spice.

  3. Pour in the stock from boiling the head.

  4. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for half an 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. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  2. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  3. Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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

Sheep's head
Provides the main meat and, through boiling, the gelatinous stock that binds the pie.
Stock from boiling the head
Adds moisture and savoury body, helping the filling stay juicy as it bakes.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliced texture to the filling.
Ham or bacon
Contributes salty, smoky flavour and fat to the layered filling.
Pastry
Seals the filling in and browns in the oven as a crisp top crust.

The step that matters

Boiling the head until the bones shake out. Boiling long enough releases collagen from the bones and connective tissue, which turns into gelatin in the stock. That gelatin is what lets the pie set and hold together when cooled; undercooking leaves the stock thin and the pie loose.

“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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