Skip to main content
Main

Cold Raised Pies

A pie filled with fresh eels, parsley, mushrooms, pepper, salt, and béchamel, baked and served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Raised Pies

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.

Prepare

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

Assemble the pie

  1. Arrange the eel pieces in the pie crust in neat layers.

  2. Season each layer with parsley, mushrooms, pepper, salt, and Béchamel sauce.

  3. Cover the pie with more paste, pinch the edges, and decorate the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Glaze with beaten egg and bake for about 1.5 hours.

  2. To serve cold, remove the top and decorate with aspic jelly.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh eels
Form the main filling, providing the savoury meat of the pie.
Short paste
Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape while baking.
Egg
Beaten egg glaze gives the pastry top a golden, glossy browning during baking.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the layered eel filling from drying out.

The step that matters

Glazing and baking the pie. Glazing with beaten egg promotes even browning, and baking long enough lets the eel cook through. Under-baking leaves raw fish, while the pastry needs full heat to set and turn crisp.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, sauce, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, sauce, egg. 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.

You might also like

Mushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes