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Veal and Ham Pie

A pie made with veal, boiled ham, herbs, spices, eggs, and puff pastry, baked and finished with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal into square pieces and layer them in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle a portion of the herbs, spices, seasoning, lemon peel, and sliced eggs over the veal.

  3. Cut the ham very thin and add a layer on top.

  4. Repeat layering until the dish is full, ensuring the ham is on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay puff pastry around the edge of the dish and pour in about ½ pint of water.

  2. Cover with more pastry, decorate with leaves, brush with egg yolk, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

  3. After baking, pour nearly ½ pint of strong gravy into the pie 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. Nutmeg + macetop 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. Nutmeg + peppertop 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 cutlets
Forms the main body of the pie, becoming tender during the long, slow bake.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury flavour in the layers and sits on top to finish the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliced texture to the layered filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the crust that seals in moisture and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Pouring in the gravy after baking. The gravy is added only after the pie is cooked, so it stays a liquid filling rather than being boiled away or thickened by the bake. Pouring it through a funnel lets it reach the layers under the pastry without breaking the crust.

Swap the mace

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

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

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