Name: Potatoe Pie
Ingredients: potatoes; mutton; beef; pork; veal; salt

Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Potatoe Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Peel and slice the potatoes.
Season the potatoes and your choice of meat (mutton, beef, pork, or veal).
Layer the seasoned potatoes and meat in a pie dish.
Cover with a pie crust and 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.

Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,690 recipes

Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).
Potato + porktop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,668 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,052 recipes

Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).
Mutton + beeftop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,373 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pork + vealtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,930 recipes

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