Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓
Veal Pie
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
Remove the bone, fat, and skin from the veal and place them in a saucepan with ½ pint of water to stew for the gravy.
Make a dough with 1 pound of butter and 2 pounds of flour, divide it into two pieces, and roll it out thick.
Cover the sides and bottom of a deep dish with one piece of the dough.
Fill and bake
Layer the veal seasoned with pepper and salt, followed by a layer of cold ham, then more veal, more ham, and intersperse with yolks of hard‑boiled eggs.
If using, add small button mushrooms for extra flavor.
Pour the gravy from the veal trimmings into the dish, cover with the second piece of dough, notching the edges and decorating the center with a paste flower.
Bake the pie at 400°F (200°C) for at least 2.5 hours.
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.
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Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,525 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
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Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together13,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,446 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,486 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
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 meat filling and, with its trimmings, the stewed gravy that moistens the pie.
- Butter
- Adds fat to the dough, making it rich and tender as it bakes.
- Flour
- Forms the dough structure that holds the pie together and encloses the filling.
- Cold ham
- Adds savoury, salty flavour between the layers of veal.
- Hard-boiled egg yolks
- Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
The step that matters
Stewing the veal trimmings for the gravy. The bone, fat, and skin release gelatin and flavour into the water; if the gravy is too thin or underdone, the pie will be watery once baked.
“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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