Skip to main content
Main

A French Pie

A French pie filled with veal, rabbit, chicken, sweetbreads, artichoke, truffles, calf's feet, suet, fruit, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Raisin and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,390 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

A 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

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

  2. Line a tin pan with puff pastry.

  3. In a bowl, combine veal, rabbits or chickens, forcemeat balls, sweetbreads, artichoke bottoms, and truffles.

  4. In another bowl, mix chopped calf's feet, mutton suet, apples, currants, raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, mace, candied citron, lemon peel, brandy, and Madeira.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill the lined pan with the meat mixture.

  2. Cover with another layer of puff pastry and decorate as desired.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Apple + cinnamontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  3. Artichoke + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Veal + truffletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (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 crust that bakes golden and encloses the filling.
Veal
Provides the main meat, giving the filling its savory body.
Calf's feet
Adds gelatin, which gives the filling a rich, sliceable body.
Mutton suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich as it cooks.
Apples
Add moisture and gentle sweetness that balance the meat.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy texture to the filling.
Brandy
Adds aromatic depth and flavor to the spiced meat mixture.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. The pastry needs enough heat to set and brown fully, so the crust is crisp and the filling is cooked through before serving.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, artichoke, truffle, mutton, apple, raisin, cinnamon):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Pearfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, artichoke, truffle, mutton, apple, raisin, cinnamon. 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

Beef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesHaricot MuttonHaricot Mutton59 recipes