Name: To Make a Veal Pot-pie
Ingredients: veal; cayenne pepper; coarse sea salt; nutmeg; parsley; butter; cream; pie crust

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Make a Veal Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Half boil the veal and cut it into small pieces.
Season the veal with cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, parsley, and a little butter.
Make a pie crust and line the sides of a deep dish with it.
Place the seasoned meat in the dish and add some cream.
Place a small cup in the middle of the pie.
Cut across the center of the pie and turn back the sides to let the steam escape.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) until cooked through.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,062 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream):

Parsleythe original
Cinnamonfits about as well
Sagefits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, butter, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.