Name: A French Pie
Ingredients: puff pastry; veal, sliced; rabbit, jointed; chicken, jointed; forcemeat balls; sweetbreads, cut into pieces; artichoke bottoms; truffles

Why it works: Rabbit and chicken work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 339 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

A French Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Roll out the puff pastry and lay it in a pie dish.
Fill the dish with veal, rabbit, or chicken pieces.
Add forcemeat balls, sweetbreads, artichoke bottoms, and truffles.
Cover with another layer of puff pastry and seal the edges.
Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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.

Rabbit + chickentop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together339 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together815 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Artichoke + truffletop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together240 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Rabbit + artichoketop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,243 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).