Skip to main content
Main

Herb Pie

A savory pie made with parsley, spinach, mustard and cress, lettuce, onions, eggs, milk, flour, butter, pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Chop all the vegetables finely.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the chopped vegetables with the milk, flour, and eggs.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered pie dish.

  2. Dot the top with bits of butter.

  3. Bake for 1.5 hours.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together503 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + lettucetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,483 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the filling and help it set firm as the pie bakes.
Fine whole wheat flour
Thickens the mixture and gives the pie its body as it cooks.
Milk
Provides moisture and softness, cooking into a creamy custard-like filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and browns the top as it bakes.
Onions
Add savory depth and aroma as they soften during baking.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, spinach, mustard, lettuce, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, spinach, mustard, lettuce, butter, egg, milk. 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.

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipes