Name: Pork Pie
Ingredients: thin, lean pork steaks; currant jelly; sliced lemon

Why it works: Currant and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,270 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Pork Pie

Ingredients

thin, lean pork steaks
currant jelly
sliced lemon

Directions

Fill a pie plate with thin, lean pork steaks, similar to how you would for a beefsteak pie.
Serve the pie with currant jelly and sliced lemon.

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.

Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,270 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Pork + lemontop 26% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,786 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).
Pork + curranttop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together468 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).