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Lamb or Veal Pie, in High Taste

A savory pie of lamb or veal with raisins, currants, spices, and a sweet sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Lamb or Veal Pie, in High Taste

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 the filling

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Season the lamb or veal pieces with pepper, salt, cloves, mace, and nutmeg.

  3. Make a puff pastry crust.

  4. Line a pie dish with the puff pastry crust.

  5. Layer the seasoned meat in the dish.

  6. Add raisins, currants, and sugar.

  7. Top with sweet forcemeat balls, artichoke bottoms (or grapes), Spanish potatoes, candied citron, orange peel, lemon peel, and mace. Dot with butter.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix egg yolks with wine in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until thick. Remove from heat.

  2. Sweeten with sugar. Add lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover with the pastry. Seal the edges.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

  3. Open the pie lid. Pour in the sauce. Close the lid again.

  4. 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lamb or veal
Provides the savoury meat that forms the body of the filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the wine sauce as they set over gentle heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the filling as it melts during baking.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture to the meat filling.
Puff pastry crust (in the method)
Forms a flaky, golden case that encloses the filling.

The step that matters

Stir the egg yolk and wine over low heat until thick. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Low, steady heat and constant stirring keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, clove, mace, nutmeg, raisin, sugar):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Limefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, clove, mace, nutmeg, raisin, sugar. 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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