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Devonshire Squab Pie

A pie of mutton chops and sour apples, layered with spices and covered in meat crust, baked to a golden finish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,395 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Devonshire Squab Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cut the mutton chops short and trim excess fat.

  2. Peel, core, and slice the sour apples.

Assemble the pie

  1. In a pie dish, layer apples with a little sugar and a sprinkling of ground allspice.

  2. Add a layer of mutton chops, seasoning with salt, pepper, and chopped onion.

  3. Continue layering apples and meat until all ingredients are used.

  4. Line the edges of the dish with meat crust and cover the top, adding gravy.

Bake

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

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. Allspice + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  3. Allspice + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Apple + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together998 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Mutton + meattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together936 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 chops
Provide the savoury meat that cooks through and flavours the pie as it bakes.
Sour apples
Add tartness that balances the rich meat and sweetened fruit layers.
Meat crust
Encloses the filling, holding in moisture and forming a sturdy pastry shell.
Gravy
Adds moisture so the filling stays juicy during baking.

The step that matters

Layering the filling. Even layers of apple and meat let heat and juices distribute evenly, so the meat cooks through without the apples turning to mush or the pie drying out.

Swap the apple

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

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

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