Skip to main content

Veal Pie

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Cut steaks from the neck or breast of veal.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and a little clove powder.

  3. Slice sweetbreads and season them similarly.

  4. Lay puff pastry on the edge of a pie dish.

  5. Layer the veal, hard-boiled egg yolks, sweetbreads, and oysters in the dish.

  6. Cover with thin slices of ham and fill the dish with water.

  7. Cover the dish and bake until done.

  8. After baking, pour warmed veal gravy and cream through a funnel into the pie.

  9. Cover the crust with paper to prevent over-browning.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pepper, nutmeg, egg, oyster, ham, cream):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, egg, oyster, ham, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

More veal pie recipes

You might also like