Name: Cold Raised Pies
Ingredients: 2 pounds eels; chopped parsley; chopped mushrooms; pepper; coarse sea salt; 1 spoonful Béchamel sauce; short paste (for pie crust)

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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble the pies

Arrange the pieces of eels in the pie crust in neat layers.
Season each layer with chopped parsley, mushrooms, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Add a spoonful of béchamel sauce between layers.
Cover the pie with more paste, pinch the edges, and ornament the top.

Bake and serve

Brush the top with egg wash and bake for about 1.5 hours.
Once done, remove from the oven and serve on a napkin.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,132 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,480 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together6,693 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eels: Forms the main filling and provides the savoury flesh of the pie.
Béchamel sauce: Adds moisture and creaminess between the layers so the filling stays tender.
Short paste: Forms the crust that encloses the filling and holds its shape while baking.
Chopped mushrooms: Adds moisture and earthy flavour to the layered filling.