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Veal Pie

A layered pie of veal, ham, and eggs, topped with a butter‑flour pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take two pounds of veal cut from the loin, fillet, or the best end of the neck.

  2. Remove the bone, fat, and skin, and put the veal into a saucepan with half a pint of water to stew for the gravy.

  3. Make a good paste, allowing a pound of butter to two pounds of flour.

  4. Divide the paste into two pieces, roll each out rather thick, and cover the sides and bottom of a deep dish with one piece.

Fill and assemble

  1. Put in a layer of veal, seasoned with black pepper, then a layer of cold ham sliced thin, then more veal, more ham, and so on until the dish is full; intersperse the meat with yolks of eggs boiled hard.

  2. Add small button mushrooms if available.

  3. Pour in the gravy drawn from the trimmings, put on the lid of the pie, notch the edge, and ornament the centre with a flower made of paste.

Bake

  1. Bake the pie for at least two hours and a half.

Finish the dish

  1. Take veal chops, sliced onions, and potatoes pared and quartered.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, and fill up the dish with water.

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

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

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Lean meat that becomes tender and flavourful during slow cooking and stewing.
Flour
Forms the structure of the paste that holds the pie together.
Butter
Adds fat to the paste, making it rich and short in texture.

The step that matters

Bake the pie for at least two hours and a half. Veal is lean, so it needs a long, steady bake to turn tender and to let the gravy and paste cook through. Stopping early can leave the meat tough and the centre undercooked.

“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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