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Mutton Pie À LA Reform

A savory mutton pie with ham, mushrooms, nutmeg, thyme, and a brown roux sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Trim the ends off the loin cutlets.

  2. Season the cutlets with salt and pepper.

  3. Lay the cutlets in a dish.

  4. Sprinkle the cutlets with grated ham, chopped mushrooms, nutmeg, and thyme.

  5. Slice the ends of the cutlets.

  6. Mix the sliced ends with the rest of the ingredients.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Strain the stock.

  3. Add claret and currant jelly to the strained stock.

  4. Thicken the sauce with brown roux.

  5. Pour the sauce over the cutlets.

  6. Cover the cutlets.

  7. Let the sauce cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Make the pie using the prepared pastry.

  2. Bake the pie 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. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + muttontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,988 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Ham + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together430 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Loin cutlets
Provide the meat that forms the body and flavor of the pie.
Mutton stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, carrying flavor through the pie.
Brown roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the meat instead of running off.
Grated ham
Adds salty, savory depth that complements the mutton.
Chopped mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and moisture to the filling.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of fruity balance to the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with brown roux. Roux must be cooked and added to hot, well-stirred stock to avoid lumps and to reach a smooth, glossy thickness; the sauce should also cool before it is sealed under pastry so the crust does not turn soggy.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (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 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.

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