Name: Pie of Cold Roast Veal
Ingredients: cold roast veal, cut into small pieces; pepper, to taste; coarse sea salt, to taste; pie paste; oysters; butter, in lumps

Why it works: Oyster and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,184 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Pie of Cold Roast Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Season the veal pieces with pepper and coarse sea salt.
Line a deep pie dish with the pie paste.

Assemble and bake

Fill the dish half full with the seasoned veal.
Top the veal with oysters and lumps of butter.
Cover the pie with the remaining pie paste and bake.

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.

Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Veal + oystertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together988 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Pepper + oystertop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together7,663 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cold roast veal: Forms the main filling, providing the meat and bulk of the pie.
Oysters: Adds a briny, savoury flavour that gives the veal a distinctive seasoning.
Butter: Adds richness and moisture, coating the meat as it melts during baking.
Pie paste: Encloses the filling as a crust, holding in juices while the pie bakes.

“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.