Name: Veal Olive Pie
Ingredients: thin slices of cold fillet of veal; thin slices of bacon; cayenne pepper; gravy or stock; sausage meat; puff pastry; parsley

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 ↓

Veal Olive 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.

Place the slices of bacon on the slices of veal.
Spread sausage meat over the bacon and add a dash of cayenne pepper and a little parsley.
Roll the slices up and fill a pie dish with them.
Add the gravy and, if possible, a little cream.
Cover with puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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).
Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,766 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + meattop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,890 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).