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Dessert

Parsley Pie

A savory pie made with parsley, meat, milk, broth, cream, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parsley Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Bake a crust over a dish with a little lining around the edge and a cup turned up to keep it from sinking.

Make the filling

  1. Scald the parsley in milk, season, and add the fowl or meat with the broth or gravy.

  2. When baked, open the lid and pour in the stew.

  3. When baked, pour the mixture into the scalded cream, add butter, and a little flour, then shake to mix with the gravy.

Finish

  1. Optionally, add scalded lettuces, white mustard leaves, or spinach to the parsley.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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
Gives the stew its meaty body and savoury flavour.
Parsley
Supplies the main herbal flavour and green colour of the filling.
Milk
Softens the parsley and forms the creamy base of the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the filling taste rounded.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the filling holds together rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Pour the baked mixture into the scalded cream and shake to combine. Flour mixed into hot liquid can clump, so it should be shaken with the gravy and cream to disperse evenly. Smooth distribution gives the filling an even, thickened texture.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, 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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