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Veal Pie

A pie filled with tender veal, butter, pepper, and flour, baked in a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the meat

  1. Combine veal and hot water to cover, add salt, bring to a boil, and skim off scum.

  2. When the meat is tender, transfer it to a dish to cool and remove all small bones.

Assemble the pie

  1. Grease a tin or earthen basin with butter and line it with pie paste.

  2. Layer some of the parboiled meat in the basin, adding pieces of butter, pepper, and dredging with flour until white.

  3. Pour in some of the cooking water until nearly full.

Bake

  1. Roll out the pie crust to ½ inch thickness, cut a slit in the center, and make small incisions on either side.

  2. Place the crust on top, trim the edges, and bake for 1 hour at 400°F (200°C).

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. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pork + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,638 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Wheat + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together213 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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
Forms the main body of the pie and becomes tender when simmered in water.
Wheat flour
Dusted over the meat to help thicken the cooking liquid into a sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as it melts into the meat and crust.

The step that matters

Simmering the veal until tender. Veal must be cooked gently in water until the connective tissue breaks down; if it is undercooked it stays tough, and removing small bones is easier once it is fully tender.

“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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