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Pie of Cold Veal and Ham

A pie filled with cold veal and thin ham, layered with egg yolks and optional oysters or mushrooms, topped with pie crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pie of Cold Veal and Ham

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the meat from the bones into ½ inch pieces and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Place the bones and fat in a saucepan, cover with water, and stew until reduced by half.

  3. Remove the bones, thicken the gravy with butter rolled in flour, and season to taste.

Assemble the pie

  1. Line a pie dish with pie crust, layer veal and ham alternately until full.

  2. Sprinkle chopped egg yolks on top of each layer.

  3. Add oysters or mushrooms if desired.

  4. Cover with pie crust, leaving an opening in the center, and pour in some gravy.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until cooked through.

  2. Serve in the baking dish with remaining gravy in a sauce tureen.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Ham + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cold veal
Forms the main meaty filling that becomes tender during slow cooking.
Cold ham
Adds savoury flavour and firmness to the layered meat filling.
Butter
Enriches the gravy and, with flour, thickens it to a smooth consistency.
Flour
Thickens the gravy when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Yolks of eggs
Chopped yolks add richness and help bind the layers as they cook.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy. Adding butter rolled in flour to hot gravy needs steady stirring so the flour cooks evenly without lumps. Properly cooked flour thickens the liquid smoothly and gives the filling a stable, sliceable body.

“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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