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Large Veal Pie

A savory pie with layers of bacon, veal, and puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Large Veal Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the bacon until cooked, then let it cool and slice it thinly.

  2. Cut the veal into large, thin slices and season with pepper and salt.

  3. Dip the veal slices in flour.

Assemble and glaze

  1. Layer bacon and veal alternately in a pie dish, sprinkling chopped shallots between layers, and finish with bacon on top.

  2. Prepare the puff pastry, place a band around the edge of the dish, wet it, and pour in the water.

  3. Cover with the remaining pastry, glaze with beaten egg, and decorate as desired.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1 hour and 45 minutes.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 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. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

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

  5. Veal + flourtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Streaky bacon
Adds salty, savoury fat that flavours the lean veal as it cooks.
Lean veal
Forms the main meat filling, cooking to tender slices in the pie.
Flour
Dusted on the veal slices to help them brown and lightly thicken the juices.
Puff pastry
Its layers of fat and dough puff into flaky, crisp layers as it bakes.
Egg
Brushed on as a glaze to give the pastry a golden, glossy browning.

The step that matters

Sealing the pastry band. Wetting the band and pressing the lid onto it seals the pie so steam stays inside. That moisture keeps the lean veal from drying out during the long bake.

“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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