Name: Sheep-Head Pie
Ingredients: 1 sheep head; ¼ pound bacon; 2 eggs; ½ tablespoon salt; ½ teaspoon pepper; ½ pint liquor from boiling the head

Why it works: Egg and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 33% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Sheep-Head Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the head

Boil the sheep head until tender.
Remove the meat from the bones and cut it into small pieces.
Remove the skin from the tongue and slice it.
Skin the bacon and slice it thinly.

Prepare the eggs

Boil the eggs for 10 minutes, then place them in cold water and remove the shells.
Slice the eggs.

Assemble and cover

In a pie dish, layer the meat, tongue, bacon, and egg, sprinkling with salt and pepper between layers.
Pour the liquor over the layers and cover with a dripping crust.

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.

Egg + peppertop 33% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Egg and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sheep head: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long boiling.
Bacon: Adds fat and savory flavor that moistens the lean meat as it bakes.
Eggs: Set when cooked, giving the pie firm slices and a rich texture.
Liquor from boiling the head: Adds moisture and gelatin-rich body that enriches 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.