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Veal Pie

A savory pie filled with parboiled veal, layered with butter or salt pork, and covered with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,930 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Parboil the veal to remove scum.

  2. Prepare a light pastry and roll it out thick.

Assemble the pie

  1. Grease the pot and line the sides with pastry, cutting pieces to avoid thick folds.

  2. Layer the meat in the pot, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  3. Add butter or salt pork and sprinkle with flour, repeating layers until all meat is used.

  4. Cover with pastry and cut a hole in the top for steam to escape.

  5. Pour in some of the water used to boil the meat.

Cook and brown

  1. Cook over low heat, adding more water through the hole if it gets too dry.

  2. For a brown crust, cover the top with a heated pan cover.

  3. Bake for about 1.5 hours.

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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  4. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main meat that becomes tender during slow, moist cooking.
Flour
Layered over the meat to thicken the juices into a light sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the layers.
Salt pork
Adds savoury fat that bastes the meat as it cooks.
Pastry (in the method)
Forms a sealed crust that holds steam and moisture inside the pot.

The step that matters

Keeping the pot moist over low heat. Low, gentle heat lets the connective tissue in veal soften slowly, but without enough liquid the meat dries and toughens. Adding water through the steam hole keeps the juices present during the long cook.

“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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