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Lamb Pie

A pie with stewed lamb, potatoes, turnips, asparagus, and butter crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 328 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

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 lamb

  1. Remove fat and bone from lamb steaks.

  2. Cut the lamb into 4‑inch square pieces.

  3. Season the lamb with salt and pepper.

  4. Place the seasoned lamb in a stew pot with ½ cup of water. Stew the lamb for about 45 minutes.

Make the crust

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ pound of butter with 1 pound of flour.

  2. Add cold water to the mixture to form a dough.

  3. Roll out the dough into a large, thin sheet.

  4. Spread the remaining butter over the rolled dough. Fold the dough.

  5. Sprinkle flour on the folded dough.

  6. Divide the dough into two sheets. Roll each sheet out.

  7. Use the thicker sheet for the upper crust.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the bottom and sides of a pie dish with the under crust.

  2. Add the stewed lamb and its gravy to the pie dish.

  3. Scatter sliced potatoes on top of the lamb. Scatter sliced boiled turnips on top. Scatter green tops of boiled asparagus on top.

  4. Add a few bits of fresh butter on the vegetables.

  5. Cover with the upper crust. Crimp the edges to seal.

  6. Make a cross‑slit on top of the crust.

  7. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until light brown.

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. Turnip + asparagustop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together328 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + asparagustop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

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

  3. Flour + turniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Lamb + asparagustop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together207 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb steaks
Stewing makes the meat tender and produces the gravy that moistens the pie.
Flour
Forms the dough structure that holds the crust together and crisps when baked.
Butter
Layered into the dough, it creates flaky texture and adds richness and browning.
Potatoes
Add starchy body and bulk that soaks up some of the savory gravy beneath the crust.

The step that matters

Crimp the edges to seal. A tight seal keeps the lamb juices and gravy inside the crust so they cook into the filling instead of leaking into the oven.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, butter, flour, potato, turnip, asparagus):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, butter, flour, potato, turnip, asparagus. 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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