Skip to main content
Main

Mutton Pie À LA Reform

A savory mutton pie filled with cutlets, ham, mushrooms, and a sauce of stock, claret, and currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mutton Pie À LA Reform

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Trim the ends off the cutlets and season the cutlets with salt and pepper.

  2. Layer the cutlets in a dish.

  3. Sprinkle grated ham, chopped mushrooms, nutmeg, and thyme over the cutlets.

  4. Slice the ends of the cutlets and mix the sliced ends with the rest.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the mutton stock with herbs and mushroom trimmings until reduced to 1½ cups.

  2. Strain the stock.

  3. Add claret and currant jelly.

  4. Thicken with brown roux.

  5. Pour the sauce over the cutlets.

  6. Cover the dish.

  7. Let cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Make the pie using the prepared pastry.

  2. Fill the pie with the cutlet mixture.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Provide the meat that becomes tender during slow cooking and forms the body of the pie.
Mutton stock
Adds savoury depth and liquid that forms the base of the sauce.
Brown roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat instead of running out of the pie.
Grated ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour that enriches the meat filling.
Chopped mushrooms
Contribute earthy flavour and moisture to the filling.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity that balances the rich meat and stock.

The step that matters

Thicken with brown roux. Roux is flour cooked in fat; it must be whisked in well and simmered so the starch swells and the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw flour taste.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, ham, mushroom, nutmeg, thyme, mutton):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, ham, mushroom, nutmeg, thyme, mutton. 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 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipesMutton SoupMutton Soup56 recipes