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Veal and Parsley Pie

A pie made with veal or chicken, parsley, milk, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,675 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal and Parsley Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Season the meat with coarse sea salt.

  2. Scald the parsley, squeeze it dry, and chop it slightly.

Layer and bake

  1. Layer the parsley at the bottom of a dish.

  2. Add the meat in layers on top of the parsley.

  3. Fill the dish with new milk, leaving space for the crust.

  4. Cover the dish and bake until done.

Finish

  1. After baking, pour out some milk and add ½ pint of scalded cream.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Veal or chicken
Forms the main body of the pie and becomes tender as it cooks in the milk.
New milk
Provides moisture and a gentle, tender cooking liquid that keeps the meat from drying out.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the finished liquid.
Flour
Helps build the crust that covers the dish.

The step that matters

Leaving space for the crust. If the dish is filled too close to the top, the liquid can bubble over during baking and the crust has room to sit and seal properly. Leaving headspace keeps the finished pie neat and the crust intact.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, cream, 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.

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