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Veal Pie

A layered veal and ham pie with a flour paste crust, baked in a water bath.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bowl

  1. Butter a large bowl thickly and line it with sliced hard-boiled eggs.

Layer the filling

  1. Layer thin slices of veal, seasoning with pepper.

  2. Add a layer of sliced ham, peppered and sprinkled with lemon juice.

  3. Repeat layers of veal and ham until the bowl is full.

Seal and cook

  1. Cover with a paste made from flour and hot water, stiff enough to handle.

  2. Press the paste closely to the bowl's sides, overlapping the rim by ¼ inch.

  3. Place the bowl in a pot of hot water, ensuring it doesn't bubble over.

  4. Boil steadily for three hours.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, remove the paste and cut the pie into thin circular slices.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Veal
Forms the main meat filling and becomes tender during the long, gentle cooking.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the layered meat filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add firm texture and mild richness between the meat layers.
All-purpose flour
Forms the stiff paste that seals the bowl and holds in moisture during cooking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich meat layers.

The step that matters

Keep the water from bubbling over. Vigorous boiling can splash water into the bowl or break the seal of the paste. Steady, gentle boiling cooks the pie evenly while keeping the paste intact.

“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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