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Veal Pie

A pie filled with parboiled veal, butter, pepper, flour, and cooking water, baked in a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,373 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

Parboil the veal

  1. Place the veal in a stewpan and cover with hot water.

  2. Add salt and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  3. Cook until the meat is tender, then transfer to a dish to cool.

  4. Remove all small bones.

Assemble the pie

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

  2. Fill halfway with the parboiled meat.

  3. Dot the meat with bits of butter, sprinkle with pepper, and dredge with flour until it looks white.

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

  5. Roll out a top crust, about ½ inch thick, cut a slit in the center, and make small incisions on either side.

  6. Lay skewers across the pie, place the crust on top, and trim the edges neatly.

Bake

  1. Bake for 1 hour in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + wheattop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + wheattop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together984 recipes

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

  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, which becomes tender through simmering in water.
Wheat flour
Dredging the meat thickens the cooking liquid into a light, rich gravy.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the meat as it melts during baking.
Pie paste
Forms the crust that holds the filling and bakes to a crisp, golden shell.

The step that matters

Parboil the veal until just tender. Cooking the meat fully before baking leaves it dry and tough; if it is only partly cooked, it may stay chewy. Tender meat in the pie needs gentle simmering and cooling before assembly.

“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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