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Dessert

Sweet Veal Pie

A pastry-wrapped pie of veal cutlets flavored with sweet spices, raisins, currants, suet, apple, sugar, and rum or brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and rum work together. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 214 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, fruity. The science ↓

Sweet Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Cover a baking dish with puff pastry and lay veal cutlets on it.

  3. Season the veal with mixed sweet spice.

  4. Sprinkle bread crumbs, stoned raisins, currants, minced suet, and minced apple over the veal.

  5. Add sugar and pour in the rum or brandy.

Cover and bake

  1. Cover with puff pastry and glaze the top with the beaten egg.

  2. Dust sifted loaf sugar thickly over the top.

  3. Bake for one hour.

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. Apple + rumtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together214 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  2. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Currant + appletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  4. Currant + rumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Raisin + appletop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a flaky crust that bakes crisp and golden on the top and base.
Veal cutlets
Provide the meat that forms the main filling of the pie.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the meat and fruit so the filling holds together.
Stoned raisins
Add chewiness and concentrated sweetness to the filling.
Minced suet
Adds richness and fat that keeps the filling moist during baking.
Minced apple
Adds moisture and tartness that balances the sweetness of the filling.

The step that matters

Dusting the top with sugar before baking. Sugar on the pastry caramelises and browns in the oven heat, giving colour and a glossy finish. Too little sugar leaves the top pale, while the filling's sugar and fruit can scorch if the oven runs too hot.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, bread, raisin, apple, sugar, rum, egg):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, bread, raisin, apple, sugar, rum, egg. 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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