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Veal Pie

A savory pie filled with veal chops, sweetbreads, oysters, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

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 Pie

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. Cut veal chops from the loin and season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, nutmeg, and pounded mace.

  2. Line the edge of a pie dish with puff pastry.

  3. Layer the veal, seasoned sweetbreads, hard-boiled egg yolks, oysters, and good gravy in the dish.

Top and bake

  1. Cover with more puff pastry and decorate the top by marking the edge with a teaspoon.

  2. Make sixteen leaves and eight buds from the pastry and arrange them on top.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours.

Finish and serve

  1. Cut the crust into eight parts and lay them over the edge of the dish.

  2. Place eight thin slices of lemon over the meat in the center and serve hot.

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 + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + oystertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,103 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal chops
Forms the main meat body of the pie, giving it savory, rich flavor as it cooks.
Puff pastry
Bakes into a crisp, flaky, golden crust that encloses and protects the filling.
Seasoned sweetbreads
Adds a tender, delicate texture and rich, mild flavor to the layered filling.
Oysters
Contributes a briny, savory flavor and moisture to the filling as it cooks.
Good gravy
Supplies moisture and savory depth, keeping the meat and layers from drying out.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 1.5 hours. Puff pastry needs a hot oven to rise and set into flaky layers. The filling must cook through fully, especially the oysters and sweetbreads, while the crust browns without burning.

Swap the mace

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

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

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