Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓
English Pork-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
Make a pie crust that is not very rich and line a deep pie dish with it.
Place the pork leg in the bottom of the dish and season with coarse sea salt and black pepper.
Cover with more pie crust.
Bake
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.
If the pie gets too brown, cover it with thick brown paper.
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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Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together22,121 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Pie crust
- Encloses the filling and forms the structure that holds the pie together while it bakes.
- Pork leg
- Provides the main filling, which cooks through in the oven and gives the pie its savoury flavour.
The step that matters
Covering the pie if it browns too quickly. The crust browns faster than the filling cooks through. Covering it with brown paper slows surface browning so the pork can cook through without the crust burning.
“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.
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