Name: Fig’s Pry, to Dress Pigeon Pie
Ingredients: 1 lb pig's fry; 2 onions; a few sage leaves; 3 lbs potatoes; pepper to taste; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fig’s Pry, to Dress Pigeon 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.

Layer the pie

Place the lean fry at the bottom of a pie dish.
Sprinkle with chopped sage and onion, and season with pepper and salt.
Slice the potatoes and add a layer on top of the seasonings.
Add the fat fry, more seasoning, and another layer of potatoes on top.

Bake

Fill the dish with boiling water and bake for 2 hours at 400°F (200°C).

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.

Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,388 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,023 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together68,474 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Sage + potatotop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together386 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Pig's fry: Supplies the meat and fat that give the pie its rich, savoury flavour as they cook.
Potatoes: Form the sliced layers that cook through and hold the pie together.
Onions: Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the cooking juices.