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French Pie

A savory pie made with veal, ham, oysters, and a sauce of gravy, oyster liquor, and mushroom ketchup, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Ham and oyster work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 360 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

French Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry.

  2. Fill it with minced veal and grated ham.

  3. Add oysters in alternate layers with the meat, seasoning with salt, mace, and lemon peel.

  4. Mix gravy, oyster liquor, and mushroom ketchup; pour over the layers.

Bake

  1. Cover with pastry and bake until the pastry is done, about 30 minutes.

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. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Oyster + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, flaky crust that encloses the filling.
Roast veal
Provides the main meaty body of the filling.
Grated ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the meat filling.
Oysters
Contribute briny, savoury flavour and tender texture to the layers.
Gravy
Adds moisture and savoury richness so the filling does not dry out.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds concentrated savoury, umami flavour to the sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, oyster, lemon, mushroom, ketchup):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Celeryfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, oyster, lemon, mushroom, ketchup. 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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