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Cold Lamb-pie

A cold pie made with lamb, bacon, ham, and short-paste crust, topped with puff pastry and aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cold Lamb-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.

Prepare the paste and filling

  1. Prepare short-paste with flour, butter, salt, egg yolks, and enough water; let rest for 1 hour.

  2. Bone lamb necks, trim sinewy parts, and cut into 1-inch squares; place in a bowl.

  3. Add blanched bacon and cooked ham to the lamb; season with salt and spices, and baste with Madeira; let macerate for 1 hour.

  4. Chop meat from lamb shoulders and fresh bacon together until very fine; season with salt and spices, and pound for 5 minutes.

Assemble the pie

  1. Roll out 3 parts of the prepared paste into an oblong square and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Spread a thick layer of force-meat in the center, then layer with lamb, bacon, and ham; cover with another thin layer of force-meat.

  3. Continue layering in a dome-like fashion, then cover with remaining force-meat and fold over the edges of the paste.

  4. Moisten the paste and cover with puff-paste; egg wash and score the top with a knife.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours, covering with paper after 10 minutes.

  2. After removing from the oven, let cool for 15 minutes, then pour in cold liquid aspic-jelly through the top opening.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

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

  3. Lamb + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together469 recipes

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

  4. Lamb + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together160 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the short-paste that holds the filling.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the short-paste tender and crumbly.
Lamb
Provides the main meat and rich flavor of the filling.
Lamb shoulder and fresh bacon
Pounded fine to form a binding force-meat that holds the layers together.
Madeira
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth to the meat during maceration.
Liquid aspic-jelly
Sets in the cooled pie to add moisture and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Pouring the aspic-jelly after baking. The aspic must be poured cold through the top opening only after the pie has cooled briefly; if it is added while the pie is too hot, it will melt rather than set, and the filling will lose its firm, jellied texture.

“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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