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Squab Pie

A savory pie made with mutton neck, apples, onions, suet, and mushroom ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ketchup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Squab 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. Cut the neck of mutton into cutlets and place them in a pie dish.

  2. Season the meat well with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Layer the sliced apples and onions on top, sprinkling with sugar.

  4. Half fill the dish with boiling water and cover with a layer of suet paste.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Before serving, pour the gravy out from the side, skim off the fat, add the mushroom ketchup, season to taste, and return to the pie.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Ketchup + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

Neck of mutton
Provides the main meat, releasing juices and fat that form the gravy as it cooks.
Apples
Add tartness and moisture, softening into the filling as it bakes.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and depth as they soften in the juices.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds a concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the finished gravy.
Suet paste
Forms a rich crust that seals in moisture and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Pouring in boiling water rather than cold starts the meat cooking immediately and helps keep the juices hot, so the filling cooks evenly under the crust.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, onion, mushroom, ketchup, sugar, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, onion, mushroom, ketchup, sugar, 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.

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