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Devonshire Squab Pie

A pie with sliced apples, mutton chops, onion, sugar, and gravy baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Devonshire 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie dish with pastry.

  3. Layer sliced apples on the bottom.

  4. Season mutton chops with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Assemble the pie

  1. Add a layer of chops, then apples, repeating until the dish is full.

  2. Chop the onion and mix it with sugar.

  3. Sprinkle over the layers.

  4. Pour in the gravy.

  5. Seal the pie.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Mutton + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,442 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

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

  5. Mutton + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,531 recipes

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

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton chops
Provide the meat, which becomes tender and flavourful during the long slow bake.
Sliced apples
Add moisture and a tart-sweet flavour that balances the rich meat.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury flavour so the filling stays juicy as it cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the onion and apple flavours caramelise slightly.
Good pastry for pie crust
Encloses the filling, holding in steam and juices while the pie bakes.

The step that matters

Seal the pie. A tight seal keeps steam and juices inside the crust, so the filling cooks through and stays moist rather than drying out or leaking in the oven.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Applethe original

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