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With Veal

A pie of finely chopped ham and veal with hard‑boiled egg slices, set in a jelly of veal stock and baked under a pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

With Veal

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. Layer the chopped ham and veal in a baking dish, adding slices of hard-boiled eggs between layers.

  2. Boil the water used to cook the veal with the bones until it forms a jelly when cold.

  3. Flavor the jelly with celery, pepper, and coarse sea salt, then pour it over the meat.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the dish with a ½-inch thick pie crust and bake at 400 °F (200 °C) until the crust is done.

  2. Allow to cool, then slice thinly.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  2. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  3. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  4. Veal + celerytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Ham and veal
Form the bulk of the filling, providing the meaty body of the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced texture and a mild richness between the meat layers.
Water from cooking veal
Becomes a savory jelly that moistens the meat and sets when cold.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the top.

The step that matters

Boiling the veal water until it jellies. The jelly sets only if enough collagen from the bones has dissolved and the liquid is reduced to a concentrated broth. Too little cooking leaves a runny filling that will not hold its shape when cooled and sliced.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, veal, egg, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, veal, egg, pepper. 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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