Name: Veal and Ham Pie
Ingredients: 2 pounds veal cutlets; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 pound raw or dressed ham; 3 hard-boiled egg yolks; 1 glass (⅓ cup) water; forcemeat or sausage meat; stewed mushrooms

Why it works: Pepper and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Cut veal cutlets into small pieces and season with pepper and salt.
Slice the ham and layer it alternately with the veal in a dish.
Add forcemeat or sausage meat on top, along with stewed mushrooms and the yolks of three hard-boiled eggs.
Pour in ⅓ cup of water.
Use the best end of a neck cut for the 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.

Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).