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Mutton Pie a LA Reform

A savory mutton pie filled with cutlets, ham, mushrooms, and a claret and currant jelly sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,907 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Mutton Pie a LA Reform

Oven, in the book's wordsA sharp oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Trim the ends off the cutlets and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Layer the cutlets in a dish, sprinkling with grated ham, chopped mushrooms, nutmeg, and thyme.

  3. Slice the ends of the cutlets and mix them with the other ingredients.

Make the sauce

  1. Simmer the stock with herbs and mushroom trimmings until reduced to 1½ cups.

  2. Strain the stock, then add claret and currant jelly, thickening with brown roux.

  3. Pour the sauce over the cutlets, cover, and let cool.

Bake and serve

  1. Prepare the pie using a thin crust, fill with the cutlet mixture, and bake until hot.

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. Nutmeg + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Mutton cutlets
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender during the long, gentle cooking in the pie.
Grated ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour that complements the mutton.
Mushrooms
Add earthy savour and moisture to the filling.
Brown roux
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the cutlets rather than running off.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth to the sauce, balancing the richness of the meat.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and body that rounds out the sharp wine flavour.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with brown roux. Stirring the roux into hot stock lets starch granules swell and gelatinise evenly, giving a smooth sauce. Adding it lumpy or to stock that is not hot enough leaves lumps and a thin, uneven texture.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, ham, mushroom, nutmeg, thyme. 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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