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Herb Pie

A savory pie made with boiled herbs, potatoes, onions, apples, butter, and sea salt, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Herb 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 the filling

  1. Boil the lettuce, leek, parsley, spinach, and beet until tender.

  2. Chop the boiled herbs very small.

  3. In a frying pan, combine the chopped herbs, diced onions, and mashed potatoes.

  4. Add butter and diced apples.

  5. Season with coarse sea salt.

  6. Fry the mixture for a few minutes over medium heat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Fill a pie dish with the mixture.

  2. Cover with pastry.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

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. Lettuce + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Lettuce + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Leek + spinachtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together42 recipes

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

  4. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Leek + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,326 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl butyrate (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the filling feel moist and savoury.
Potatoes
Mashed potato thickens the filling and gives it a soft, starchy body.
Apples
Add natural sweetness and a fresh acidity that balances the savoury herbs.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma as they soften in the fat.

The step that matters

Chop the boiled herbs very small. Fine chopping gives the cooked greens an even, tender texture throughout the filling, so no large fibrous pieces interrupt the pie when it is sliced and eaten.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lettuce, leek, parsley, spinach, onion, potato, butter):

  1. Avocadofits better
  2. Lemonfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, leek, parsley, spinach, onion, potato, butter. 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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