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Dessert

Cold Raised Pies

Cold raised pies are pies filled with eels, parsley, mushrooms, pepper, salt, and béchamel sauce, served cold with aspic jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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

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

Assemble the pie

  1. Arrange the eels in the short pastry in neat layers.

  2. Season each layer with parsley, mushrooms, pepper, salt, and béchamel sauce.

  3. Cover the pie with more short pastry, pinch the edges, and ornament the top.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the top with egg wash and bake for about 1.5 hours.

  2. To serve cold, carefully remove the top and decorate with aspic jelly.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Parsley + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. 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

Short paste
Forms the crisp, sturdy case that holds the layers and browns in the oven.
Eels
Provide the main filling, which firms and sets as it cooks and cools.
Béchamel sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess so the filling does not dry out in the oven.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a clear gel that glazes and decorates the cold pie.

The step that matters

Bake and serve. Baking for about 1.5 hours cooks the eels through and sets the filling. Because the pie is served cold, it must cool fully before the top is removed, so the aspic can set cleanly.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mushroom, pepper, sauce):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Garlicfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against mushroom, pepper, 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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