Skip to main content
Main

Veal and Ham Pie

A layered pie of veal and ham topped with puff pastry, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Ham 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.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the veal cutlets into small pieces and lay them in the bottom of a deep pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle with mace, pepper, salt, savory herbs, grated lemon peel, and slices of hard‑boiled egg yolks.

  3. Cut the ham very thin and add a layer on top.

  4. Repeat the layers until the dish is full, finishing with ham on top.

Top and bake

  1. Lay an edge of puff pastry on the rim of the dish.

  2. Pour in the water and cover with a crust of puff pastry.

  3. Decorate with pastry leaves, brush with egg yolk, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlets
Forms the main meat layers, becoming tender and moist as it cooks slowly under the crust.
Boiled ham
Adds savory, salty flavor between the veal layers and contributes to the pie's richness.
Egg yolks
Brushed on top, they promote a glossy, golden browning on the pastry.
Savory herbs
Contribute aromatic, savory flavor that seasons the veal through the layers.

The step that matters

Pouring in the water before covering. The water is added to the filled dish before the crust goes on, so it must be poured in with care; once sealed, the pastry traps steam and moisture, keeping the veal from drying out during the long bake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesVeal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipes