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Veal Pie, with Pork

A savory pie made with equal parts veal and pork, seasoned with pepper, salt, mace, onions, parsley, and sage, baked in pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and sage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,445 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal Pie, with Pork

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 filling

  1. Cut the veal and pork into neat pieces and season with pepper, salt, and pounded mace.

  2. Mix the minced onions with chopped parsley and shredded sage.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the veal and pork in a dish, sprinkling the onion mixture over each layer.

  2. Pour veal stock or water over the meat.

  3. Cover with pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 to 2 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. Parsley + sagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,445 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal and pork
Form the bulk of the pie, becoming tender and juicy as they cook.
Onions
Add moisture and mild sweetness to the meat layers as they soften.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and bakes into a crisp, browned top.

The step that matters

Covering with pastry and baking. The pastry must seal the dish so steam and juices stay in, keeping the meat moist while it cooks slowly over 1.5 to 2 hours.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, pork, pepper, onion, parsley, sage):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Winter savoryfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pork, pepper, onion, parsley, sage. 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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