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A Veal Pie

A pie of parboiled veal pieces in gravy, covered with pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Veal and pork are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,930 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

A 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 the meat

  1. Parboil the veal pieces in water until about half cooked.

  2. Remove the veal and let it cool.

Make the gravy

  1. Season the cooking water with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and diced salt pork.

  2. Dredge in a little flour to thicken the gravy.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line the sides of your pie dish with pastry.

  2. Add the meat and gravy to the dish.

  3. Cover with a thick layer of pastry and cut a small hole in the top.

  4. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for half an hour.

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. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  4. Mace + porktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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
The main meat, gently parboiled so it stays moist before baking.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savoury flavour to the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a gravy.
Mace
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the gravy.
Pastry
Forms the crust that encloses the meat and gravy.

The step that matters

Parboil the veal until about half cooked. The meat finishes cooking in the oven, so fully cooking it first would leave it dry and tough. Stopping at about half cooked keeps it tender and moist once baked inside the pie.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Sagefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, pork, flour. 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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