Name: Domestic Pasty
Ingredients: saddle of mutton; cold-boiled pickled pork; gravy beef; chicken; pie crust

Why it works: Pork and beef match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Domestic Pasty

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

Cut the saddle of mutton into small pieces.
Chop the cold-boiled pickled pork and gravy beef.
Remove the meat from the chicken and chop it.
Combine all the meats in a bowl.

Assemble and bake

Prepare a pie crust and fill it with the meat mixture.
Cover with another layer of pie crust and seal the edges.
Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until golden brown.

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 + beeftop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Pork + chickentop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,417 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Beef + chickentop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,148 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Mutton + porktop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,239 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

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

What each ingredient does

Saddle of mutton: Provides the main body of rich, savory meat flavor in the filling.
Cold-boiled pickled pork: Adds salty, cured meat flavor that seasons the filling.
Gravy beef: Adds beefy flavor and some chew to the meat filling.
Chicken: Contributes a lighter meat flavor and tender texture to the filling.
Pie crust: Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the outer shell.

“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.