Name: Chicken and Beef-Steak Pie
Ingredients: hard-boiled eggs; button mushrooms; parsley; gravy; pie crust; 1 beaten egg for glazing

Why it works: Mushroom and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,132 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Chicken and Beef-Steak 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.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Prepare a pie crust and pack it into a pie dish.
Layer hard-boiled egg quarters and button mushrooms in the dish.
Sprinkle finely minced parsley over the top.
Pour gravy gently into the pie dish to moisten the contents.
Leave an opening in the center of the crust for venting.
Brush the top of the crust with the beaten egg towards the end of baking.

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.

Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,987 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).