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Mutton Pie

A pie filled with seasoned mutton and onion, baked with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Mutton Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mutton

  1. Cut steaks from a loin or neck of mutton that has hung.

  2. Beat the steaks and remove some of the fat.

  3. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and finely chopped onion.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a little water at the bottom of the dish and a little pastry at the edge.

  2. Cover with moderately thick pastry.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

  4. Pour a spoonful of gravy made from mutton into each pie after baking.

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. 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 steaks
Provide the meat that cooks tender and forms the filling.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a crisp crust.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savoury depth to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking long enough sets the pastry and browns it through, while the meat cooks until tender. Underbaking leaves raw pastry and tough meat, and the crust needs enough heat to brown properly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Tomatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, 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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