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Small Vegetable Pates, French Style

A small French-style vegetable pâté made with sautéed onions, carrots, turnip, celery, parsnip, cabbage, and cream sauce, wrapped in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and parsnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 590 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Small Vegetable Pates, French Style

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and lightly fry the onion until soft.

  2. Add the carrot, turnip, celery, parsnip, and cabbage. Fry for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and sugar.

  4. Moisten with broth and cook until reduced to a glaze.

  5. Stir in the cream sauce and parsley. Let the mixture cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the puff pastry and cut out 3-inch rounds. Wet the edges of each round.

  2. Place some filling in the center. Cover with another round. Press the edges to seal.

  3. Place on a buttered and floured baking pan. Baste with the egg yolk mixture.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

Serve

  1. Serve on a napkin.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Turnip + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together590 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,097 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + cabbagetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together897 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that softens the onion and adds rich flavour to the filling.
Puff pastry
Flaky, layered casing that puffs and browns around the filling in the oven.
Reduced allemande or cream sauce
Adds richness and body, helping bind the vegetables into a smooth filling.
Carrot
Provides sweetness and colour, and body once cooked to a glaze.
Turnip
Adds mild, slightly sweet body to the vegetable filling.
Egg yolk
Brushed on the pastry to promote even golden browning in the oven.

The step that matters

Reducing the vegetables to a glaze. Cooking off the broth until the vegetables are nearly dry keeps the filling thick. Excess liquid would soften the pastry and make the pâtés soggy.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsnip, cabbage, pepper):

  1. Leekbetter flavor fit
  2. Beetrootbetter flavor fit
  3. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsnip, cabbage, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, 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.

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