Name: Ham Ties
Ingredients: 2 pounds veal cutlets; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt (formerly 'bay salt'); 1 slice raw or cooked ham; forced or sausage meat; stewed mushrooms; 3 hard-boiled egg yolks; ½ cup water

Why it works: Pepper and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Ham Ties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut veal cutlets into medium-sized pieces.
Season with pepper and a little salt.

Assemble and bake

Layer veal and ham slices alternately in a dish.
Top with forced or sausage meat, stewed mushrooms, and hard-boiled egg yolks.
Add water and proceed to bake as you would a rump steak pie.

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.

Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 body of the pie, becoming tender as it cooks in liquid.
Ham: Adds salty, savoury flavour that seasons the layered veal.
Forced or sausage meat: Adds a rich, fatty, savoury layer that keeps the filling moist.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Add richness and a creamy texture to the filling.
Stewed mushrooms: Add moisture and earthy, savoury flavour to the filling.

“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.