Name: Parsley Pie
Ingredients: 1 fowl or bones of scrag of veal; 1 colander-full of picked parsley; 1½ cups milk; coarse sea salt to taste; 1 cup good broth or weak gravy; ¼ pint cream; 1 walnut-sized piece of butter; 1 tablespoon flour

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

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Place the fowl or veal bones in a dish.
Scald the parsley in milk and season it.

Bake and finish

Add the parsley to the fowl or meat along with the broth or gravy.
Bake until cooked through.
In a separate pot, scald the cream with the butter and flour.
Mix the cream with the gravy in the dish before serving.

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.

Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together865 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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

Parsley: Provides the main green flavour and bulk of the pie filling.
Milk: Softens the parsley and forms the moist base of the filling.
Cream: Adds richness and smoothness to the sauce.
Flour: Thickens the cream with the butter into a smooth sauce.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the cream sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, milk, cream, walnut, butter, flour):

Nutmegfits better
Cinnamonfits better
Sagefits about as well
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.