Name: Ham-pie
Ingredients: Pastry for pie crust; Cold boiled ham, sliced ½ inch thick; Hard-boiled eggs, sliced; 1 large young fowl, cleaned and cut up; Pepper, to taste; Water or veal gravy; Small button mushrooms (optional), peeled and stalks removed

Why it works: Pepper and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ham-pie

Ingredients

Pastry for pie crust
Cold boiled ham, sliced ½ inch thick
Hard-boiled eggs, sliced
1 large young fowl, cleaned and cut up
Pepper, to taste
Water or veal gravy
Small button mushrooms (optional), peeled and stalks removed

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Roll out the pastry and cover the sides and bottom of a pie dish.

Assemble the pie

Layer the bottom with ham slices, followed by fowl pieces, then hard-boiled egg slices, and another layer of ham.
Season with pepper and pour in water or veal gravy.
If using, add mushrooms for extra flavor.
Cover the pie with a crust, notch and decorate it.

Bake

Bake 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.

Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Pastry: Forms the crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Cold boiled ham: Adds savory, salty flavor and a firm meaty texture to the layers.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and a firm, sliced texture to the filling.
Young fowl: Provides the main meat, which becomes tender as it cooks in the pie.
Water or veal gravy: Supplies moisture that cooks the meat and forms a savory juice.

“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.