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Parsley Pie

A savory pie made with veal bones, parsley, milk, broth, cream, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Parsley Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the fowl or veal bones and place them in a dish.

  2. Scald the picked parsley in milk and season it.

  3. Add the parsley to the fowl or meat along with the broth or gravy.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until cooked through.

  2. Scald the cream with the butter and flour in a separate pot.

  3. Mix the scalded cream mixture with the gravy in the dish.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  3. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Fowl or veal bones
Provide the meat base and rich flavour that the pie is built on.
Parsley
Gives the dish its main green flavour and aroma after scalding in milk.
Milk
Cooks the parsley gently and adds moisture and softness to the filling.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the sauce.
Butter and flour
Form a thickening roux that gives the sauce body.

The step that matters

Scald the cream with the butter and flour. Flour must be cooked with the butter and liquid kept hot but not boiling, so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps or a raw floury taste.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, milk, cream, walnut, butter, 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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