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Dessert

Shasoning for Raised Pies

A blend of coarse sea salt, white pepper, cayenne pepper, cloves, allspice, basil, marjoram, thyme, bay leaf, nutmeg, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Shasoning for Raised Pies

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound the spices and herbs separately.

  2. Sift the ground spices through a fine sieve.

  3. Mix the sifted spices with the coarse sea salt.

  4. Store the mixture in a stoppered bottle.

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. Marjoram + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  5. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Forms the bulk of the seasoning and carries the flavour of the spices through the mixture.
White pepper
Adds sharp, pungent heat that seasons the pie filling.
Cayenne pepper
Adds clean, fiery heat that sharpens the other seasonings.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic pungency to the blend.
Allspice
Contributes warm, aromatic flavour that blends several spices together.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma that complements the nutmeg and pepper.

The step that matters

Sift the ground spices through a fine sieve. Sifting removes coarse fragments and uneven particles, so the spices blend evenly with the salt and no pockets of strong flavour remain in the pie.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, clove, allspice, basil, marjoram, thyme, nutmeg):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Rosemaryfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, clove, allspice, basil, marjoram, thyme, nutmeg. 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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