Name: Sweet Patties
Ingredients: 1 boiled calf's foot; 2 apples; 1 ounce candied orange peel; 1 ounce candied lemon peel; ½ nutmeg, grated; 1 egg yolk; 1 tablespoon brandy; 4 ounces currants, washed and dried

Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Sweet Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Chop the meat of the boiled calf's foot.
Mix the chopped meat with the apples, candied peels, grated nutmeg, egg yolk, brandy, and currants.

Bake

Fill small pattypans with the mixture.
Bake until golden.

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.

Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together10,634 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Apple + orangetop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,230 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,746 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled calf's foot: Provides the main meaty bulk of the filling.
Egg yolk: Binds the mixture together so it holds its shape in the pans.
Apples: Add moisture and tartness that balance the sweet candied peels and currants.
Currants: Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the filling.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, orange, lemon, nutmeg, egg, brandy):

Figfits better
Blackberryfits better
Apricotfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, orange, lemon, nutmeg, egg, brandy. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.