Name: Savory Veal Pie
Ingredients: Veal, cut small; Minced ham (boiled); Forcemeat balls (minced veal or sausage, bread crumbs, butter, yolk of one egg); Gravy; Puff paste; Mushrooms or sweetbreads (optional)

Why it works: Veal and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,446 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Savory Veal Pie

Ingredients

Veal, cut small
Minced ham (boiled)
Forcemeat balls (minced veal or sausage, bread crumbs, butter, yolk of one egg)
Gravy
Puff paste
Mushrooms or sweetbreads (optional)

Directions

Stew the veal until nearly done.
Boil down the gravy.
Season the veal and layer it in a dish.
Add a layer of minced ham.
Make forcemeat balls by mixing minced veal or sausage with bread crumbs, seasoning, and butter; add the yolk of one egg and form into balls.
Dot the ham layer with the forcemeat balls.
Cover the meat with the brown gravy.
Cover with puff paste and bake until golden.

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.

Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

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