Name: Veal and Ham Pie
Ingredients: 1 pound veal; 1 pound ham; Flour for dusting; Salt and pepper to taste; Butter or dripping for greasing

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Make a pastry dough using your preferred recipe.
Prepare the veal and ham as usual and place them in the center of the rolled-out pastry, about 1/8 inch thick.
Moisten the four corners of the pastry and fold them over to cover the meat.

Bake

Place the pie in a paper bag, seal it, and put it on a grid in a moderate oven at 300°F (150°C).
Bake for 45 minutes for a 1-pound pie, 1 hour for a 3-pound pie, 1.5 hours for a 6-pound pie, and 2 hours for a 10-pound pie.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,475 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).
Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together50,459 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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, providing savory flavor and a tender bite when baked.
Ham: Adds salty, savory flavor that complements the mild veal.
Pastry dough (in the method): Encloses the meat, holding in juices while the pie bakes.

“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.