Skip to main content
Dessert

French Pie

A pastry pie filled with minced veal, ham, oysters, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

French Pie

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 the filling

  1. Mince the cold roast veal and ham together.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and lemon peel.

  3. Add 1 tablespoon of mushroom catsup, 25 oysters with their liquor, and 3-4 tablespoons of rich gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a dish with puff pastry, fill it with the mixture, and cover with more pastry.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the pastry is cooked through.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  3. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, crisp crust that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Cold roast veal
Provides the main meaty body of the filling once minced.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and soft texture to the filling.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth so the minced meat stays juicy.
Ham
Contributes salty, smoky savour that complements the veal.

The step that matters

Bake until the pastry is cooked through. Pastry needs enough oven heat to set and brown fully. Underbaking leaves the crust pale and doughy, while the filling must be hot throughout to be safe and tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, pepper, lemon, mushroom, oyster):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, pepper, lemon, mushroom, oyster. 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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes