Skip to main content
Main

A Good Mutton Pie

A savory pie filled with sliced mutton, optional herbs, shallots, forcemeat, kidneys, and a pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and shallot are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,898 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

A Good Mutton 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter a pie dish and line it with the pastry.

  3. Remove the fat from the mutton and slice it into equal-thickness cutlets.

  4. Season the cutlets with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer the cutlets in the dish, adding minced herbs and shallots if desired.

  2. Optionally, add rolled thin forcemeat and mutton kidneys between the layers.

  3. Pour in a little cold water.

  4. Roll out the pastry cover to ½ inch thick and place it over the pie.

  5. Seal the edges and trim them to fit the dish.

  6. Make a hole in the center of the pie for steam to escape.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1.5 to 2 hours until cooked through.

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 + shallottop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mutton + shallottop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together407 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 main meat filling, which becomes tender and flavourful during long baking.
Pastry
Forms a crisp, browned crust that encloses the filling and holds in moisture.
Mutton kidneys
Adds rich, savoury depth and a firmer texture to the filling when used.

The step that matters

Make a steam hole in the pastry lid. Without a vent, steam from the water and meat juices builds pressure under the crust, which can lift or split the pastry and make the filling soggy.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Shallotthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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.

More mutton pie recipes

with Potato Crust 4 See all 109 →

You might also like

Mutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipesCurried MuttonCurried Mutton9 recipes