Name: Pork Pies
Ingredients: thin slices of fat pork; white pepper; mace or nutmeg; coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); slices of apple, cored and peeled; sugar; puff pastry or crust; beaten egg or melted butter; sweet cider (optional)

Why it works: Apple and cider are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,238 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Pork Pies

Ingredients

Directions

If using salt pork, parboil the slices.
Layer pork in a baking pan and season with white pepper, mace or nutmeg, and salt if needed.
Add a layer of apple slices sprinkled with sugar.
Repeat layers until you reach the desired quantity, finishing with a layer of apples.
Cover with puff pastry or a crust made from soda and cream of tartar biscuit recipe.
Before the pie is done, brush the top with beaten egg or melted butter.
Optionally, add a glass of sweet cider before covering the pie.

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.

Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,238 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,695 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Pork + appletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,581 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
Mace + appletop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together865 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pork + macetop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,565 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, mace, apple, sugar, egg, cider):

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Clovefits better
White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, mace, apple, sugar, egg, cider. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.