Name: Excellent Pork Pies
Ingredients: common boiled crust; small bits of pork; pepper; coarse sea salt; fat from pork; lean meat from pork

Why it works: Pork and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Excellent Pork Pies

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Shape the boiled crust into a round or oval form.
Prepare small bits of pork from a hog, or use meat from a sweet bone if needed.
Beat the pork with a rolling pin and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Fill and bake

Layer the fat and lean meat in the crust, filling it close to the top.
Cover with the lid, smooth the edges, and pinch to seal.
Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until cooked through.

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.

Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,208 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Common boiled crust: Forms the sturdy outer case that holds the filling in shape while it cooks.
Fat from pork: Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it cooks.
Lean meat from pork: Provides the main meaty body of the filling.

“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.