Skip to main content
Main

Cheshire Pork Pie

A savory pie with pork, apples, and wine, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cheshire Pork Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Remove skin and fat from the pork and cut it into thin steaks.

  2. Season the pork with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a deep pie dish with pastry, then add a layer of pork.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced apples and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Place another layer of pork on top.

  4. Pour the white wine over the layers, season again, and dot with butter.

  5. Cover with pastry, cutting a hole for steam to escape.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the top with beaten egg and bake at 300°F (150°C) for 1 hour.

  2. 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.

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

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

  2. Apple + white winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together372 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. White wine + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Apple + nutmegtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,790 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. 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

Loin of pork
Forms the main meat filling, becoming tender as it cooks slowly under pastry.
Tart apples
Add moisture and a sharp acidity that balances the rich pork and sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the apple layer and helps the top brown in the oven.
White wine
Adds moisture and acidity, and carries flavour through the layers as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting over the layers to moisten the filling.

The step that matters

Cover with pastry, cutting a hole for steam to escape.. Steam trapped inside a sealed pie can build pressure and make the filling watery or lift the crust. A vent lets steam escape while the meat cooks.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, sugar, apple, white wine, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Pork CakePork Cake107 recipesRoast PorkRoast Pork82 recipesApple SoupApple Soup33 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes