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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with stewed veal, ham or bacon, hard‑boiled eggs, and herbs, topped with a crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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

Prepare the veal and ham

  1. Stew the veal very slowly for 1 hour, then cut it into walnut‑sized pieces.

  2. Partially cook the ham or bacon.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer the veal in a pie dish and sprinkle with lemon rind, mace, and herbs.

  2. Add small pieces of ham or bacon and slices of hard‑boiled eggs, repeating layers until full.

  3. Let the ham form the top layer and add a pinch of pepper and a little salt.

  4. Pour the stock over the layers and cover with a crust.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. For gravy, stew veal bones in stock or water with 1 onion, herbs, mace, and lemon rind.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, strain, and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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, becoming tender and moist during slow stewing.
Ham or streaky bacon
Adds salty, savory flavor and fat that enriches the layered filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a firm, sliced layer that adds richness and body to the filling.
Stock
Moistens the layers and sets into a savory jelly as the pie cools.

The step that matters

Stew the veal very slowly. Slow, gentle heat keeps the meat tender and moist; rapid boiling toughens muscle proteins and squeezes out juices.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, lemon, egg, pepper. 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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