Name: Cold Meat Turnovers
Ingredients: soda biscuit dough; cold fresh meat or game, chopped fine; catsup; sweet herbs; melted butter; cream; coarse sea salt, to taste; black pepper, to taste

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cold Meat Turnovers

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 soda biscuit dough and roll it thin.
Cut circles of desired size from the dough.
In a bowl, mix the chopped meat with catsup, sweet herbs, melted butter, and cream.
Place the meat mixture on one half of each dough circle.
Fold the other half over and pinch the edges to seal.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) or fry in hot lard until golden.
Serve hot or cold.

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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Biscuit + peppertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together841 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Biscuit + meattop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together159 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,235 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).