Name: Rook Pie
Ingredients: Rooks (birds), cleaned and prepared; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; Thick melted butter; Meat (for layering)

Why it works: Butter and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,594 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Rook 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.

Pick and clean the rooks, removing heads, feet, and backbones.
Soak the birds in cold water and coarse sea salt for several hours to remove any strong flavor.
Season the rooks with black pepper and coarse sea salt.
Layer the seasoned rooks in a dish over a layer of meat.
Pour thick melted butter over the birds.
Cover the dish and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

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.

Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,594 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Pepper + meattop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together8,777 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).