Name: Veal Pie with Sausage
Ingredients: cutlets from the fillet of veal (½ inch thick); coarse sea salt; black pepper; powdered mace; Bologna sausage (thinly sliced); good pastry

Why it works: Pepper and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Veal Pie with Sausage

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

Season the veal cutlets with salt, pepper, and mace.
In a dish, layer the veal cutlets and sliced Bologna sausage alternately. The veal will provide enough gravy to moisten the pie.

Bake and serve

Cover the dish with pastry.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.
Serve hot or cold.

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 + macetop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,761 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlets: Provide the meat and, as they cook, the gravy that moistens the pie.
Bologna sausage: Adds savory, seasoned flavor between the layers of veal.
Good pastry: Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the golden crust.