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French Pie

A savory pie made with calf's liver, bacon, veal, and poultry, seasoned and baked with gelatin stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and veal match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 392 recipes. Both carry enoic acid, which smells butter, cheesy. The science ↓

French Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the calf's liver until tender.

  2. Once cooled, mince the liver and onion together twice.

  3. Pound the mixture in a mortar and season with white pepper, coarse sea salt, cayenne, mace, and nutmeg.

  4. Soak the gelatine and melt it with the stock.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a china mold with thin slices of bacon.

  2. Layer the cooked meat or poultry, then the pounded liver, repeating until the mold is full.

  3. Pour in some of the melted stock with gelatine, cover the top with bacon, and bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C).

Rest

  1. Do not unmold until the next day.

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. Liver + vealtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together392 recipes

    Shared aroma: enoic acid (butter, cheesy).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Rabbit + oniontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,292 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Calf's liver
Forms the smooth, rich body of the pie once cooked and pounded.
Unsmoked fat bacon
Lines the mold and covers the top, adding fat and moisture as it cooks.
Gelatine
Sets the stock into a firm jelly that holds the pie together when unmolded.
Stock
Provides liquid that, set with gelatine, keeps the pie moist.
Cold roast veal
Adds meaty texture and body to the layered filling.

The step that matters

Do not unmold until the next day. The gelatine needs time in the cold to set fully; unmolding early can cause the pie to crumble or slump.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (liver, veal, rabbit, onion, nutmeg, mace):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against liver, veal, rabbit, onion, nutmeg, mace. 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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