Name: Pork and Apple Pie
Ingredients: pork, thinly sliced; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; grated nutmeg, to taste; apples, pared, cored, and sliced; sugar, to taste; white wine, enough to moisten; butter, 2-3 tablespoons; pie crust

Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pork and Apple Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Season the pork slices with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.
In a pie dish, layer the pork and sliced apples alternately.
Sprinkle a little sugar over the layers.

Assemble and bake

Add enough white wine to moisten the mixture.
Place 2-3 tablespoons of butter on top.
Cover with pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together372 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,083 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Nutmeg + appletop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,790 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,581 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pork: Forms the savory filling and becomes tender as it cooks under the crust.
Apples: Add moisture and tartness that balance the richness of the pork.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the filling and helps the top crust brown.
White wine: Moistens the layers and adds acidity that brightens the flavors.
Sugar: Adds sweetness that balances the savory pork and tart apples.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, pepper, apple, sugar, white wine, butter):

Cinnamonfits better
Clovefits better
Thymefits about as well
Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, pepper, apple, sugar, white wine, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.