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Cold Veal or Chicken' Pie

A pie filled with shredded cold veal or chicken, ham, cream, spices, and onion, baked with a double crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cold Veal or Chicken' 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Lay the pie crust into a shallow tart dish.

  3. In a bowl, combine the shredded veal or chicken, ham, cream, white pepper, cayenne pepper, salt, nutmeg, and chopped onion.

  4. Fill the crust with the meat mixture.

  5. Cover with another layer of crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown, about 25-30 minutes.

  2. If desired, place a piece of bread in the crust while baking to keep it hollow.

  3. Warm the remaining meat mixture with a little cream and pour it into the baked crust before serving.

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

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  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

Cold veal or chicken
Provides the main body of the filling and its meaty flavor.
Lean ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a firmer bite to the meat filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays tender rather than dry.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness and depth to the savory filling.

The step that matters

Warm the remaining meat mixture with a little cream before pouring it in. Pouring in cold filling loosens the warm baked crust's contents unevenly and cools the pie; adding a little cream keeps the mixture moist and pourable so it spreads evenly without drying out.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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