Name: Meat Pie
Ingredients: 16 oz. of meat (for males); 14 oz. of meat (for females); 4 oz. of bread; 1 oz. of cheese; 1 pint of beer (for males); ½ pint of beer (for females)

Why it works: Bread and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Meat Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Prepare the meat by cooking it until tender.

Assemble and bake

Roll out the pastry and line a pie dish.
Fill the pie with the cooked meat.
Cover with another layer of pastry and seal the edges.
Bake in the oven for about 30-40 minutes until golden brown.

Serve

Serve with bread and cheese, and beer.

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.

Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,130 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cheese + beertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together174 recipes

Shared aroma: 5-ethyl-3-hydroxy-4-methyl-2(5h)-furanone (spice).
Meat + breadtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,924 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + beertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together146 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity).
Meat + cheesetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together564 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Meat: Forms the savoury filling and is cooked until tender before assembly.
Pastry (in the method): Not listed as an ingredient in the record, so omitted.

“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.