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Savory Pasties

Savory Pasties are pastry parcels filled with a mixture of cooked meat, ham, celery, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Savory Pasties

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Coarsely mince equal quantities of cooked meat and ham.

  2. Season the mixture with celery, coarse sea salt, and pepper.

  3. Mix enough thick white or brown sauce with the mince to moisten it.

Assemble and bake

  1. Roll out the paste to about ⅛ inch thick and cut into rounds the size of a claret glass.

  2. Spread half the rounds with the mince, sprinkle with parsley and finely-chopped onion.

  3. Cover with the remaining rounds of paste, wet the edges, and pinch them together.

  4. Brush the tops with beaten egg or milk.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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.

  1. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 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

Cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the savoury filling.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling.
Thick white or brown sauce
Moistens the mince so the filling stays juicy rather than dry.
Paste
Forms the pastry casing that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Beaten egg or milk
Gives the pastry tops a golden, glossy browning when baked.

The step that matters

Pinching the edges shut. Wet edges pressed firmly together seal the pasties so the moist filling does not leak out during baking, keeping it juicy inside.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, ham, celery, pepper, sauce, parsley, egg):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, ham, celery, pepper, sauce, parsley, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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