Name: Excellent Pork Pies to Eat Cold
Ingredients: pork trimmings and small bits; pepper; coarse sea salt; water; gravy; crust (for pie)

Why it works: Pork and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,121 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Excellent Pork Pies to Eat Cold

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Raise a common boiled crust into a round or oval form.
Prepare pork trimmings and small bits, and beat them with a rolling pin.
Season the meat with pepper and coarse sea salt, keeping fat and lean separate.

Assemble and bake

Layer the meat in the pie 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 done.

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 + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,121 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Pork trimmings: Provides the meat that forms the filling and gives the pie its savoury flavour.
Crust: Holds the filling in shape and encloses it during baking.
Gravy: Adds moisture and flavour to the filling as it cooks.

“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.