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Mutton or Veal Pie

A pie with mutton or veal, mushroom ketchup, optional onion and potatoes, baked with a crust and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton or Veal 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

  1. Trim the fat from the mutton chops or veal brisket and season them.

  2. Place the meat in a pie dish with a little water and the Mushroom Catchup.

Bake

  1. Cover the dish with pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for two hours.

Finish the gravy and serve

  1. Lift the crust with a knife, then pour out the gravy.

  2. Let the gravy stand and skim off any fat.

  3. Add more seasoning to the gravy (if desired) and bring the gravy to a boil.

  4. Pour the gravy back into the pie before serving.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 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 chops or veal brisket
Provides the meat that becomes tender and flavourful during the long, slow baking.
Mushroom catchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the meat and the gravy it produces.
Pie crust
Seals the dish so the meat braises in its own steam and juices.

The step that matters

Skim off any fat. Fat rises and pools on the surface of the gravy as it stands. Removing it before reboiling keeps the gravy from tasting greasy and gives it a cleaner, less heavy texture.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Spinachfits about as well
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, mushroom, potato. 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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