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Roman Pie

A savory pie with minced meat, pasta, eggs, parsley, thyme, and brown sauce encased in short pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Roman Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a greased round cake tin with short pastry.

  3. Pass the cooked meat through a mincing machine.

  4. Boil the macaroni or spaghetti, then cut it into small pieces.

  5. Slice the hard-boiled eggs.

Assemble the pie

  1. Mix the minced meat, macaroni, egg slices, parsley, thyme, and brown sauce together.

  2. Fill the pastry case with the mixture and brush the edges with egg.

  3. Cover with another round of pastry, seal the edges, and decorate with a knife.

  4. Make a large hole in the center and decorate the top with leaves.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the top with egg and bake for 1 hour.

  2. Carefully turn out onto a cloth, then onto a dish so the top is served up.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Meat + thymetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,008 recipes

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

  3. Meat + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,040 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Meat + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,167 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked meat
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its savoury flavour.
Eggs
Hard-boiled slices add firmness and body to the filling, while the beaten egg wash browns the crust.
Macaroni or spaghetti
Adds soft pieces of pasta that give the filling more body and texture.
Brown sauce
Adds moisture and savoury flavour that binds the filling together.
Short pastry
Forms a rich, crisp case that holds the filling and bakes golden.

The step that matters

Turning out the pie. Baked pastry is fragile and the filling is soft, so turning it out too quickly can break the crust. Letting it rest briefly and lifting it carefully onto a cloth keeps the top intact.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, parsley, egg, sauce. 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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