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Veal and Oyster Pie

A savory pie made with veal, oysters, ham, spices, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 and Oyster Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Layer thin pieces of cold roast fillet in the bottom of a pudding dish.

  2. Sprinkle with dressing or minced ham.

  3. Cover with oysters and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, butter bits, grated lemon peel, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  4. Add more veal to fill the dish.

  5. Pour in yesterday's gravy mixed with oyster liquor.

Bake

  1. Cover with pastry and bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour.

  2. Brush the top with egg white just before removing from the 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the pie its meaty body.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour that pairs with the veal.
Yesterday's gravy
Supplies moisture and savoury depth so the filling does not dry out.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour through the filling.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven as a crisp top crust.

The step that matters

Brush the top with egg white just before removing from the oven. Egg white dries to a thin, glossy, light-golden film when heated, so timing matters; brushing too early can run or set unevenly, and leaving it too long can over-brown the pastry.

“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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