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French Pie Crust

A pie crust filled with a forcemeat of calf's liver, fat bacon, herbs, and fowl or rabbit joints.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

French Pie Crust

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pastry

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, lightly rub the butter into the flour and salt.

  3. Mix in the beaten eggs and enough water to form a smooth paste.

  4. Roll out the paste lightly two or three times and bake as soon as possible.

Make the forcemeat

  1. Fry the calf's liver and fat bacon until cooked through, then chop finely.

  2. Pound the mixture in a mortar until smooth, then add herbs, pepper, mustard, mace, salt, and bread crumbs.

  3. Mix in the egg yolks until smooth.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line the bottom of the pie crust with bacon slices, add a layer of forcemeat, and fill with joints of fowl or rabbit.

  2. Remove any bones and fill spaces with forcemeat.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the pastry once mixed with water and eggs.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour, it adds fat that keeps the pastry tender and short.
Eggs
Bind the pastry dough and add richness to the paste.
Calf's liver
Gives the forcemeat its main savory flavour and firm, meaty body.
Fat bacon
Adds fat and moisture to the forcemeat and carries savory flavour.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the pounded forcemeat together.

The step that matters

Roll the paste lightly and bake it soon. Overworking pastry dough develops gluten, which makes the crust tough instead of tender. Handling it little and baking promptly keeps the crust short and crisp.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, egg, liver, pepper, mustard, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, liver, pepper, mustard, bread. 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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