Name: Ham Pie
Ingredients: thick pie crust; ½ inch thick slices of cold boiled ham; hard boiled eggs, sliced; 1 large young fowl, cleaned and cut up; pepper to taste; water or veal gravy; small button mushrooms (optional)

Why it works: Pepper and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ham Pie

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Cover the sides and bottom of a dish with a thick pie crust.

Assemble and bake

Layer the bottom with ham slices, followed by fowl pieces, then sliced eggs, and another layer of ham.
Sprinkle with pepper and pour in water or veal gravy.
If using, prepare mushrooms by peeling and cutting off the stalks, then add them to the pie.
Cover the pie with a crust, notch and ornament it, then bake until golden.

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 + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Thick pie crust: Forms the base and top that enclose the filling while it bakes.
Cold boiled ham: Adds savoury flavour and meaty texture to the layers.
Hard boiled eggs: Add richness and a firm, sliced texture to the filling.
Young fowl: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the pie.
Water or veal gravy: Supplies moisture that steams the filling and forms a savoury sauce.

“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.