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Parsley Pie

A savory pie made with veal bones, parsley, 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

  1. Season the fowl or veal bones and place them in a dish.

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

  3. Add the parsley to the fowl or meat along with the broth or gravy.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until cooked through.

  2. Pour in the scalded cream mixed with butter and flour, shaking to combine with the gravy.

  3. Serve hot.

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
Provide the main meat and body of the pie filling.
Parsley
Supplies the dominant herbal flavour and green colour to the filling.
Milk
Softens and carries the parsley, mellowing its flavour in the sauce.
Broth or weak gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the filling as it bakes.
Cream
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smoother, richer texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture so it coats the filling.

The step that matters

Pour in the scalded cream mixed with butter and flour, shaking to combine with the gravy.. Flour needs to be well dispersed in liquid before it heats; otherwise it clumps instead of thickening the sauce smoothly. Shaking the dish distributes the mixture evenly through the gravy.

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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