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Veal and Pork Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed veal and pork, served with a thickened gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Veal and Pork Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the veal into 5 or 6 pieces.

  2. Stew the veal slowly in 1 quart of water with celery, onion, thyme, parsley, and lemon peel for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the veal.

  4. Cut the meat from the bones into small pieces.

  5. Return the bones and gristle to the saucepan.

Make the gravy

  1. Season the mixture with pepper and salt.

  2. Let it stew for several hours until the gristle is soft and the gravy thickens into a firm jelly.

Assemble and bake

  1. Prepare the pie by arranging the veal and pork in small pieces.

  2. Add enough gravy to moisten.

  3. Reserve some gravy.

  4. Bake the pie until golden brown.

  5. After removing it from the oven, pour reserved gravy into the center hole of the crust to fill it 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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal breast
Provides the main meat and, through its bones and gristle, the gelatin that sets the gravy.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness to the filling.
Water
Forms the stock that cooks the veal into a gravy.
Celery
Adds aromatic flavor to the stock.

The step that matters

Stewing the bones and gristle until the gravy sets. Gelatin from the gristle and bones only sets the gravy into a firm jelly after several hours of slow simmering. If the stew is cut short, the gravy stays thin and the pie will be loose when cut.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, celery, thyme, parsley, lemon, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, celery, thyme, parsley, lemon, pepper. 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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