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Chestnut Pie

A savory pie made with chestnuts, celery, onion, and butter, topped with a wheatmeal pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Chestnut Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the chestnuts until partly tender, then remove the skins.

  2. Cut the celery into pieces, discarding the very hard outer pieces.

  3. Slice the onion and stew it in 1 pint of water until tender.

  4. Mix the chestnuts, celery, onion, and 1 oz of butter.

  5. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Make pastry using the wheatmeal, 3 oz of butter, and a little cold water.

  2. Turn the vegetable mixture into a pie dish.

  3. Cover with pastry.

  4. Bake for 1 hour.

  5. Serve with brown gravy.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Celery + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Chestnut + celerytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Chestnut + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together696 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Chestnuts
Provide the main bulk and starchy, floury texture of the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and softening the filling.
Allinson fine wheatmeal
Forms the flour base of the pastry, giving it structure once baked.
Spanish onion
Adds savoury sweetness and aroma as it softens in water.

The step that matters

Cover with pastry. The pastry must seal the filling fully so steam and juices are held in while baking, and the pie does not dry out or leak.

Swap the chestnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (celery, onion, butter, pepper):

  1. Black-eyed peafits better
  2. Beansfits better
  3. Sesamefits about as well
  4. Chestnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against celery, onion, butter, pepper. 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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