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Excellent Pork Pies, to Eat Cold

Cold pork pies made with boiled crust, pork, sweet bone meat, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and meat are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,208 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. 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 the crust

  1. Raise the boiled crust into a round or oval form.

Fill and seal

  1. Prepare small bits of pork and meat from a sweet bone.

  2. Beat the meat with a rolling pin and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Layer the pork in the crust, keeping fat and lean separate, up to the top.

  4. Cover with the lid, smooth the edges, and pinch to seal.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until cooked through.

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.

  1. Pork + meattop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,208 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  3. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled crust
Holds the filling in shape and forms the sturdy outer casing of the pie.
Pork
Provides the main filling, with its fat adding moisture and rich flavour as it cooks.
Meat from a sweet bone
Adds savoury depth and extra juices to the filling as it bakes.

The step that matters

Keeping fat and lean separate. Layering fat and lean meat separately lets the fat baste the lean as it renders, helping the filling stay moist rather than dry.

“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.

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