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Pork Pie

A savory pie with thinly sliced apples and pork, seasoned with pepper and spices, topped with sugar and crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,581 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cover the dish with pie crust.

Layer the filling

  1. Layer thinly sliced apples on the bottom.

  2. Add a layer of thinly sliced raw pork.

  3. Season with black pepper and spices to taste.

Finish and bake

  1. Sprinkle sugar on the upper crust.

  2. Bake 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.

  1. Apple + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,581 recipes

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

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Apple + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together16,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Apple + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,026 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Apple and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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

Apples
Add tartness and moisture that softens during baking, balancing the rich pork.
Pork
Forms the savory filling that cooks through inside the crust.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and provides the structure that holds the pie together.
Sugar
Sweetens the upper crust and promotes browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake for 1.5 hours. Raw pork must reach a safe internal temperature throughout the pie. Thick layers of meat under a pastry lid can stay underdone at the center, so the full bake time at the stated oven heat matters.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Mangofits better
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Applethe original

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

More pork pie recipes

English 10Leicestershire 6Cheshire 5Raised 5Apple 3Crust 3 See all 68 →

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