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Wash Day Meat Pie

A pie made with veal, chicken, eggs, and gravy, encased in a soft dough.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Wash Day Meat Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Chop the cold veal and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice.

  2. Remove bones from the chicken, chop it, and season with chopped celery and butter.

  3. Heat the chicken gravy until hot.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, cottage, salt, baking powder, and egg. Add milk to form a soft dough.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie dish with the dough, about ¼ inch thick.

  2. Layer the veal at the bottom, followed by the quartered eggs, and then the chopped chicken.

  3. Pour enough hot gravy over the layers to moisten them.

  4. Cover with another layer of dough, about ¼ inch thick.

  5. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 30 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Veal + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-butanedione (buttery, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that encloses the filling.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure to the crust.
Veal
Provides the main meat flavor and a tender, moist texture in the filling.
Chicken
Adds a second meat layer that stays moist under the hot gravy.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, set texture and substance to the layered filling.
Chicken gravy
Moistens the layers so the filling does not dry out while baking.

The step that matters

Pour the hot gravy over the layers. The gravy must be hot so it moistens the meat and eggs evenly without cooling the filling; cold gravy can leave dry spots and pockets.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, egg, milk, veal, pepper, lemon, chicken):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, egg, milk, veal, pepper, lemon, chicken. 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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