Name: Moulded Potted Meat or Fish
Ingredients: potted ham or any other meat; clarified butter; small salad; hard-boiled eggs (optional); savory jelly (optional)

Why it works: Ham and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,475 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Moulded Potted Meat or Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Pack the potted ham or meat tightly into a pan or mold.
Pour a thin layer of clarified butter on top and let it cool completely.
Dip the mold in hot water to loosen the meat gently with a thin knife.
Turn it onto a dish and glaze it lightly.
Surround with a border of small salad and decorate with hard-boiled eggs or savory jelly cut into dice.

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.

Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).