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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with veal, ham, and egg yolks, baked with a top crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Layer the veal pieces in the bottom of a dish.

  2. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, nutmeg, savory herbs, lemon peel, and egg yolks.

  3. Add layers of finely chopped ham until the dish is full, finishing with ham on top.

  4. Pour in ½ pint of water and cover with the top crust.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.5 hours.

  2. After baking, pour 1 pint of rich hot stock through a funnel into the 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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 cutlet
Forms the main meat layer, becoming tender and juicy as it cooks.
Boiled ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and firm texture through the layers.
Hard boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body to the filling as they blend with the meat.
Rich hot stock
Adds moisture and savory depth to the filling after baking.

The step that matters

Pouring in the hot stock after baking. Adding the stock after baking keeps it from being absorbed or boiled away during cooking, so the pie stays moist and the stock stays rich in gelatin and flavor.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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