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Excellent Pork Pie, to Eat Cold

A pork pie with a boiled crust, seasoned pork filling, baked until solid.

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 Pie, to Eat Cold

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Shape the common boiled crust into a round or oval form.

  2. Prepare small bits of pork and meat from a sweet bone if necessary.

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

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the pork in the crust, keeping fat and lean separate, filling close to the top.

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

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until solid.

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

Common boiled crust
Holds the filling in a firm shell while the pork cooks.
Small bits of pork
Forms the main filling, and its fat keeps the meat moist as it cooks.
Meat from a sweet bone
Adds extra meat and flavour to the filling, if used.

The step that matters

Layering the pork and sealing the lid. Filling close to the top leaves little room for shrinkage, and a tight seal keeps juices and moisture inside during the slow bake, so the filling sets solid rather than drying out.

“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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