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Dessert

Raised Pie

A pie made with a lard or butter paste, filled with meat or game, and glazed before baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Dissolve lard or butter in boiling water.

  2. Mix in flour with a spoon until smooth and firm.

Shape the pie

  1. Mould a lump of paste into a sugar loaf shape.

  2. Flatten the sides with your palms until smooth and equal.

  3. Hollow the inside with your fingers, keeping equal thickness.

  4. Fill the hollow with your choice of meat, poultry, or game.

Close and glaze

  1. Roll out a cover and egg the edges.

  2. Press the edges securely together and make a hole in the center.

  3. Lay a roll of paste around the hole and decorate as desired.

  4. Glaze the pie before baking.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Lard or butter
Adds fat that keeps the crust tender and rich.
Flour
Forms the gluten structure that holds the walls of the pie together.
Water
Boiling water melts the fat and softens the starch, making the paste pliable for shaping.
Egg
Gives the glaze a glossy, golden-brown finish when brushed on.

The step that matters

Hollow the inside with equal thickness. Walls of even thickness bake at the same rate and hold the pie's shape. Thin spots can overbake, tear, or collapse under the filling's weight.

“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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