Name: Veal Pie
Ingredients: fresh veal, cut from across the loin; butter; forcemeat (pounded ham, seal fat, etc.); gravy; seasoning; ½ ounce unpressed caviar per pound of veal

Why it works: Butter and caviar work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 107 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Quickly toss the veal in butter.
Cut the veal into small pieces and roll them in portions of forcemeat.
Assemble the veal and forcemeat into a raised pie or an ordinary pie.
Add gravy, seasoning, and caviar to the pie.

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 + caviartop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together107 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,381 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Veal + caviartop 28% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together17 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).