Name: A Plain Gooſe Pie
Ingredients: 1 goose; 1 fowl; forcemeat; ½ pound butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; raised crust

Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

A Plain Gooſe Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Quarter the goose and season it well with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Place it in a raised crust.
Cut the butter into pieces and distribute it on top.

Bake

Cover with the lid and bake in a moderately heated oven (350°F / 175°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.

Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Goose: Forms the main meat of the filling and releases fat that moistens the pie.
Fowl: Adds more meat and savory flavor to the filling.
Forcemeat: Adds body and moisture, binding the filling around the meat.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist as it bakes.
Raised crust: Holds the filling together and gives the pie its structure.

“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.