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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed veal, ham, forcemeat, egg yolks, and topped with gravy and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 veal

  1. Stew the veal very slowly for about 30 minutes, then cut into small square pieces about 2 inches long.

  2. Place the veal at the bottom of a dish and season with pepper and salt.

Assemble the pie

  1. Add a layer of ham, then a layer of forcemeat, and top with slices of egg.

  2. Fill the dish.

  3. Make sure the top layer is ham.

  4. Pour in the gravy.

  5. Cover with puff pastry.

  6. Decorate the top with leaves.

Bake and finish

  1. Brush the crust with egg yolk before baking.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. After baking, pour in the remaining gravy through a funnel.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 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
Forms the main meat filling, becoming tender through slow stewing and cutting into pieces.
Eggs
Hard-boiled yolks add richness and a firm, sliced texture inside the pie.
Gravy
Provides moisture so the filling stays juicy as the pie bakes.
Forcemeat
Adds a seasoned, tender layer that binds flavor through the filling.

The step that matters

Stew the veal slowly. Slow, gentle heat breaks down the connective tissue in veal so it turns tender rather than tough and dry. Rushing with high heat tends to toughen the meat.

Swap the mace

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

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

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

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