Name: Veal and Sweetbread Pie
Ingredients: veal; sweetbread; 3 hard boiled egg yolks; 1 pint oysters; 1 pint milk or good gravy; puff pastry

Why it works: Egg and oyster are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,103 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal and Sweetbread Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Cut the veal into pieces.
Clean and blanch the sweetbread, then cut it into pieces.
In a deep dish, layer the veal, sweetbread, and the yolks of three hard boiled eggs.
Add 1 pint of oysters and strain the oyster liquor.
Mix the oyster liquor with 1 pint of milk or good gravy and pour it over the meat.
Cover the dish with puff pastry.

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.

Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,103 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + oystertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together988 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Oyster + milktop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,933 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Veal + milktop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,013 recipes

Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).