Name: Mutton or Beef Cold-meat Pie
Ingredients: small piece of dripping; mashed potatoes; cold sliced meat; gravy; beaten yolk of egg

Why it works: Potato and meat work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 786 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Mutton or Beef Cold-meat Pie

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.

Melt the dripping in the bottom of a pie dish.
Cover the dripping with a layer of mashed potatoes.
Add a layer of cold sliced meat over the potatoes.
Repeat layering until the dish is full.
Moisten the layers with gravy.
Cover the top with more mashed potatoes.
Brush the potatoes with the beaten yolk of egg.
Bake for 30 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Potato + meattop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together786 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,432 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Potato + eggtop 29% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,978 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).