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Lamb Pie, Savoury

A savory lamb pie with puff pastry, lamb, veal, sweetbreads, oysters, forcemeat, egg yolks, asparagus, and a gravy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lamb Pie, Savoury

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the lamb pieces with pepper, coarse sea salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

  2. Make a puff pastry crust.

  3. Place the seasoned veal inside the pastry crust.

  4. Add lamb stones, sweetbreads, oysters, forcemeat balls, sliced egg yolks, and boiled asparagus tops to the crust.

  5. Dot the filling with butter.

  6. Cover the filling with the pastry lid.

Make the sauce

  1. While baking, mix gravy, oyster liquor, port wine, and grated nutmeg in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until boiling.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. Pour the mixture into the pie.

  3. Cover with the lid and serve.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs thicken the sauce as they cook and set when boiled.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the gravy sauce.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, buttery crust that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the filling and crust brown.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the filling.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten eggs and cook until boiling. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with heat. Boiling them into the sauce while stirring keeps the mixture smooth, but overcooking can make it grainy or curdled.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, veal, oyster, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, veal, oyster, egg. 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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