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Veal Pie

A savory pie with veal and bacon, baked with a crust and a gravy mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and ketchup are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,435 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the meat

  1. Boil the veal and bacon in a little water until nearly tender.

  2. Roll out the crust and cut it to fit a deep pie dish, leaving the bottom crustless.

  3. Place a teacup in the center of the dish and layer the meat around it.

Make the gravy

  1. Beat the raw egg with a little flour.

  2. Mix the beaten egg and flour into the gravy, adding pepper, salt, and ketchup.

  3. Pour half of this mixture over the meat.

  4. Reserve the other half of the mixture.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover the pie with the crust.

  2. Wet the edges of the crust to seal in the gravy.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the crust is golden brown.

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. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Veal
Provides the main body of meat, which becomes tender through slow moist cooking.
Bacon
Adds fat and savory flavor that carries into the meat and gravy.
Raw egg
Binds with the flour and gravy so the filling thickens and holds together when baked.
Flour
Thickens the gravy so it clings to the meat rather than running off.

The step that matters

Boil the veal and bacon until nearly tender. The meat cooks further in the oven, so boiling it only until nearly tender keeps it from drying out or turning tough. Cooking it fully here would overcook it during baking.

“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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