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Mutton or Veal Pie

A savory pie filled with mutton or veal, onions, potatoes, and mushroom ketchup, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Mutton or Veal 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Trim the fat from the mutton and season the chops with salt.

  3. Place the chops in a pie dish with water and mushroom ketchup.

Bake the pie

  1. Cover the pie with pie crust.

  2. Bake for about 30 minutes.

Finish the gravy

  1. Lift the crust with a knife.

  2. Pour out the gravy.

  3. Let the gravy stand and skim off the fat.

  4. Add more seasoning to the gravy, if desired.

  5. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  6. Pour the gravy back into the pie.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together968 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  4. Mutton + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together685 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mushroom + ketchuptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton
Meat that becomes tender and rich-flavoured as it cooks slowly in the covered pie.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated mushroom flavour that deepens the savoury taste of the gravy.
Pie crust
Seals the pie so the chops cook gently in their own juices and gravy.

The step that matters

Skimming the fat from the gravy. Fat from the meat rises and collects on the surface of the gravy as it stands. Skimming it before reboiling and returning the gravy to the pie keeps the sauce from tasting greasy.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, mushroom, ketchup, onion. 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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