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An Olive Pie

A veal pie baked in puff pastry with gravy, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

An Olive Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the veal

  1. Rub the veal slices with egg yolks.

  2. Sprinkle breadcrumbs, lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt over the veal.

  3. Roll the veal slices tightly and place them in a baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the gravy over the veal and top with butter.

  2. Cover the dish with puff pastry, rolling it to 1/2 inch thick for the lid.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove from the oven, cut off the lid, and slice it into pieces.

  2. Arrange the lid pieces around the rim and cover the meat with lemon slices before serving.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into tender, savoury meat when rolled and baked.
Egg yolks
Bind the seasonings to the veal surface and add richness to the filling.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb juices and help hold the seasonings together around the rolled veal.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Gravy
Provides moisture and savoury flavour, keeping the veal from drying out as it bakes.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky lid that puffs and browns, sealing in the moisture of the dish.

The step that matters

Rolling the veal tightly. Tight rolling keeps the seasonings and egg-bound coating inside each slice and helps the meat cook evenly. Loose rolls can open and dry out during the long bake.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, egg, lemon, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Sagefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, lemon, pepper, butter. 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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