Name: Small Bird Pie
Ingredients: fillets of beef or veal, thinly sliced; 12 larks, fieldfares, or sparrows, cleaned and trimmed; coarse sea salt; black pepper; 12 chopped mushrooms; fine herbs, chopped; hard-boiled eggs, sliced; Consomme (No. 1)

Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Small Bird 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.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Line a pie dish with thin slices of beef or veal.
Clean and trim the birds, leaving the livers in.
Sprinkle the birds with salt and pepper.

Assemble and bake

Add chopped mushrooms and fine herbs on top.
Layer the dish with the birds and slices of hard-boiled eggs.
Fill the dish with consommé.
Cover and bake according to the directions for Beefsteak Pie.

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.

Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,232 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,971 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Mushroom + eggtop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,987 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Beef + eggtop 31% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beef or veal: Forms the lining that surrounds the birds and holds the juices during baking.
Birds (larks, fieldfares, or sparrows): Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and savoury as it cooks in the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and body to the filling as the yolks soften against the other ingredients.
Mushrooms: Contribute moisture and earthy flavour as they release liquid into the filling.
Consommé: Supplies liquid that gently cooks the filling and forms a savoury, flavourful sauce.

“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.