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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with seasoned veal and ham, hard‑boiled eggs, and optional vegetables or sauces, topped with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Prepare a seasoning of salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Rub the veal and ham slices with the seasoning.

  3. Roll up the meat slices and place them in a dish.

  4. Add water and chopped hard-boiled eggs.

  5. If the ham is very salty, adjust the seasoning accordingly.

  6. Add parsley, forcemeat, catsup, mushroom, tomato, or Worcestershire sauce if desired.

Bake

  1. Cover with good pastry and bake.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  3. Mushroom + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,719 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meaty body and texture of the filling.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour that seasons the rolled meat.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm, sliced-through texture and richness to the filling.
Pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven as a crisp crust.

The step that matters

Adjust the seasoning for salty ham. Ham is often cured with salt, so its saltiness varies. Tasting and reducing added salt keeps the pie balanced, since salt concentrates as the filling cooks down.

Swap the parsley

The recipe marks parsley as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, nutmeg, veal, ham, egg, mushroom, tomato):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Clovefits about as well

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