Name: Blet Pie
Ingredients: 3 sets of duck or goose giblets; 1 lb. of rump steak; 1 onion; 1 tablespoon of whole black pepper; a handful of savory herbs; plain pie crust; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Blet 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.

Prepare the giblets

Clean the giblets and place them in a pan with the onion, whole pepper, and savory herbs.
Add 2 cups of water and simmer for about 30 minutes.
Once cool, cut the giblets into pieces.

Assemble the pie

Line the bottom of a pie dish with a few pieces of rump steak.
Add the giblet pieces and more pieces of steak.
Season with pepper and salt, and pour in the gravy from the giblets.
Cover with a plain crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.
Cover the pie with a piece of paper to prevent the crust from browning too much.

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.

Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Giblets: Provide the main meat and flavor, and their simmered liquid becomes the gravy.
Rump steak: Adds meaty flavor and tender texture as it cooks within the pie.
Plain pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns during baking to form the top layer.