Why it works: Mutton and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,442 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓
A Good Mutton 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.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roll out the pastry and line a buttered dish with it.
Remove the fat from the mutton and cut the meat into equal thickness cutlets.
Season the cutlets with salt and pepper or cayenne.
Layer the cutlets in the dish, sprinkling minced herbs between the layers.
Cover with another layer of pastry and seal the edges.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.
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.
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Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together5,442 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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