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Veal Pie, Good

A savory pie filled with veal, ham, eggs, forcemeat, and optional mushrooms, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal Pie, Good

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Season the veal with salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon rind, and mace.

  2. Cut the veal and ham into 1½ inch square pieces.

  3. Layer the meat in a buttered pie dish and pour over the stock or water.

  4. Add the yolks of hard-boiled eggs, forcemeat balls, and mushrooms or truffle.

Bake and serve

  1. Line the edge of the dish with pastry, cover with more pastry, and trim.

  2. Make a hole in the center for steam to escape.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

  4. Serve with seasoned veal gravy poured into the pie after baking.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlets
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavorful during the long, moist baking.
Thin ham
Adds salty, savory flavor that complements the mild veal.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Pastry
Forms the enclosing crust that holds in steam and moisture while the filling cooks.

The step that matters

Making the steam hole. Cutting a vent in the top crust lets steam escape during baking. Without it, pressure builds inside the pie, which can make the crust bulge or split and leave the filling watery.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg, mushroom):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg, mushroom. 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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