Name: Indian Pepper-pot
Ingredients: cooked meat, poultry, or game (cut into neat pieces); West Indian pickles (cut into small pieces); casaripe sauce (enough to cover the ingredients)

Why it works: Meat and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,167 recipes. The science ↓

Indian Pepper-pot

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

cooked meat, poultry, or game (cut into neat pieces)
West Indian pickles (cut into small pieces)
casaripe sauce (enough to cover the ingredients)

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble

Place the cut meat, poultry, or game into a fireproof earthenware pan or jar.
Add the chopped West Indian pickles.
Pour enough curry sauce over the ingredients to cover them well.

Bake and serve

Cover the pan and bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve hot or cold.

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.

Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,167 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat, poultry, or game: Forms the main body of the dish and provides its savoury, meaty flavour.
West indian pickles: Add sharp acidity and tang that cut through the rich sauce and meat.
Casaripe sauce: Covers the ingredients so they stay moist and absorb the spiced flavour as they bake.

“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.