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An English Pork Pie

A savory pork pie with diced pork, hard‑boiled eggs, and a browned flour sauce, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

An English Pork Pie

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 pork

  1. Cook the pork in enough weak stock to cover it for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the pork cool in the stock.

  3. Remove the pork and cut it into neat dice.

Assemble the pie

  1. Butter a deep dish.

  2. Layer some of the diced pork.

  3. Add a layer of chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  4. Season with onion juice, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Add bits of butter and dust with browned flour.

  6. Strain and reheat the cooking liquor.

  7. Stir in a lump of butter rolled in browned flour.

  8. Cook for 1 minute.

  9. Add Worcestershire sauce and pour into the pie.

  10. Let it cool before covering with pie crust.

  11. Cut a slit in the middle of the crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake covered at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

  2. Uncover.

  3. Wash with egg white.

  4. Brown the crust.

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.

  1. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Pork
Provides the main meat, which is cooked gently in stock so it stays tender.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliced texture inside the filling.
Browned flour
Thickens the cooking liquor into a rich gravy and adds a toasty flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, enriching the gravy and filling.
Worcestershire sauce
Adds savoury, tangy depth that balances the rich pork and butter.

The step that matters

Let the pork cool before covering with crust. Pouring hot filling under pastry can soften or melt the crust's butter, so the base may turn soggy instead of crisp while baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, egg, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, egg, pepper, nutmeg, butter, flour, sauce. 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.

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