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Veal and Parsley Pie

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,766 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Veal and Parsley Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut slices from the leg or neck of veal, seasoning with coarse sea salt.

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

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the chopped parsley and meat in a dish.

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

  3. Cover the dish and bake until done.

Finish

  1. Pour out some milk and add ½ pint of good 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. Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,766 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Veal + milktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Parsley + milktop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,011 recipes

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

  5. Veal + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the meat that becomes tender during slow, moist cooking.
Fresh parsley
Adds a fresh, green herbal aroma that cuts through the rich meat.
New milk
Supplies moisture that keeps the meat soft and forms the sauce as it cooks.
Scalded cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the finished liquid a smooth, silky texture.

The step that matters

Cover the dish and bake until done. Covering traps steam so the meat cooks gently in the milk and stays moist. Overcooking at high heat toughens the meat proteins and can curdle the milk, so check doneness rather than baking blindly.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Macefits better
  3. Celeryfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

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