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Veal Pie

A savory pie with veal, sweetbreads, egg yolks, ham, and optional oysters, baked in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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

Prepare

  1. Cut steaks from the neck or breast of veal and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and clove.

  2. Slice the sweetbreads and season them similarly.

  3. Line the edge of a dish with puff pastry.

Assemble and bake

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

  2. Top with thin slices of ham and fill the dish with water.

  3. Cover the dish and bake until cooked through.

Finish and serve

  1. After baking, pour in a few spoonfuls of veal gravy and cream to fill up.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meaty body of the pie and becomes tender as it cooks slowly.
Sweetbreads
Add a soft, creamy texture and a rich, delicate flavor to the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, buttery crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Veal and sweetbreads must reach a safe, fully cooked internal temperature while the pastry browns. Covering the dish traps steam so the meat cooks gently and stays moist rather than drying out.

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.

“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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