Why it works: Chicken and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,172 recipes. Both carry 1-butyl acetate, which smells fruity, banana. The science ↓
Meat and Vegetable 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.
Finely mince the cold beef, veal, or mutton and mix with bread crumbs.
Line a dish with pastry.
Add a layer of minced meat at the bottom.
Place a few oysters on top.
Add boned chicken, turkey, or rabbit limbs.
Layer with peas or spinach and force-meat balls.
Add small mushrooms.
Pour in rich gravy and thicken with cream and flour.
Top with a thick layer of bread crumbs and brush with a beaten egg.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.
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.
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Chicken + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,172 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-butyl acetate (fruity, banana).
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Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,148 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
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Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Peas + mushroomtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together890 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,536 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
Swap the peas
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, bread, oyster, chicken, meat, mushroom, cream):
- Peanutfits about as well
- Sesamefits about as well
- Beansfits about as well
- Peasthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against beef, bread, oyster, chicken, meat, mushroom, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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