Why it works: Truffle and meat work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 527 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Poultry Pie, with Truffles
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the stuffing
Make a hash with chopped poultry, truffles, suet, and fine herbs. Season lightly.
Layer one-third of the stuffing in the pie crust.
Fill the inside of the poultry with the remaining stuffing.
If using turkey, fill the spaces between the pieces with stuffing after removing the bones.
Cook the poultry
Lard and season the poultry with fine spices, then stew and cook it.
Assemble and bake
Arrange the cooked poultry on the pie crust with truffles and hashed suet.
Cover with slices of fat meat.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.
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.
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Truffle + meattop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together527 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Poultry
- Provides the main body of the pie and becomes tender when stewed and baked.
- Truffles
- Contribute a strong, earthy aroma that flavours the stuffing and the pie.
- Suet
- Adds fat that keeps the stuffing and meat moist and rich during baking.
- Slices of fat meat
- Cover the pie and baste the filling with fat as it bakes, adding moisture and browning.
The step that matters
Stew and cook the poultry before assembling. Poultry added to the pie raw would need to cook through inside the crust, which can leave the meat dry or undercooked. Cooking it first ensures it is tender and safe, so the final bake mainly heats and sets the pie.
“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.
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