Name: Meat and Potato Pie of Cold Cooked Meat
Ingredients: Potatoes; Yolk of 1 egg; Mashed potatoes; Small stews (curry of veal cutlets, broiled mutton kidneys, palates in white sauce, sliced and fried sweetbreads); Dressed vegetables (optional); Pastry (optional)

Why it works: Veal and mutton are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,394 recipes. Both carry 1-nonanal, which smells fatty, waxy. The science ↓

Meat and Potato Pie of Cold Cooked Meat

Ingredients

Potatoes
Yolk of 1 egg
Mashed potatoes
Small stews (curry of veal cutlets, broiled mutton kidneys, palates in white sauce, sliced and fried sweetbreads)
Dressed vegetables (optional)
Pastry (optional)

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.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Form a potato border around a dish that is 1.5 inches high.
Create four compartments with the potatoes across the dish.
Brush the potato border with the yolk of the egg.
Press mashed potatoes through a fine sieve over the border.
Brown the potatoes in the oven or before the fire.
Fill the compartments with different small stews or dressed vegetables.
Optionally, use pastry instead of potatoes.

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 + muttontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,394 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).
Potato + muttontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together293 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + vealtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together343 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Potato + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,073 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Mutton + saucetop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,087 recipes

Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).