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Parsley Pie

A savory pie made with fowl or veal bones, parsley, broth, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 865 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Parsley Pie

Ingredients

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the fowl or veal bones in a dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Scald the picked parsley in milk and season it.

  2. Add the parsley to the fowl or meat along with the broth or stock.

  3. Bake in the oven.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, mix the scalded cream, butter, and flour, then add to the dish and stir to combine with the gravy.

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. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fowl or veal bones
Provide the meat and body that give the dish its savory base.
Broth or stock
Adds moisture and savory depth to the gravy as it bakes.
Scalded cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the gravy.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding out the flavor of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it becomes smooth and lightly bodied.
Picked parsley
Contributes fresh herbal flavor and aroma to the dish.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the cream and butter before adding it to the dish. Flour mixed directly into hot liquid or fat can clump. Combining it smoothly first helps it disperse evenly so the gravy thickens without lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, cream, walnut, butter, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, cream, walnut, butter, flour. 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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