Skip to main content
Main

A Ham Pie

A pie made with sliced ham, a fowl, hard‑boiled egg yolks, and rich beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,971 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

A Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make a pie crust and lay it in a pie dish.

  2. Layer the sliced ham in the dish and season with pepper.

  3. Prepare the fowl by seasoning the inside with pepper and salt, and rub salt on the outside.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the fowl on top of the ham.

  2. Add the yolks of hard-boiled eggs and cover with more ham.

  3. Sprinkle with pepper, cover with the crust, and bake well.

Serve

  1. When done, fill the pie with rich beef gravy 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 + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Ham + beeftop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,729 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

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

  4. Ham + peppertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,058 recipes

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

  5. Egg + beeftop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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

Cold boiled ham
Forms the savoury meat layers and adds rich, salty flavour to the pie.
Young fowl
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender and flavourful as it cooks in the crust.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks add richness and a creamy texture between the layers of meat.
Crust
Encloses the filling and holds in moisture and heat during baking.
Rich beef gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth when poured into the baked pie.

The step that matters

Bake well. The fowl and ham must cook fully through under the crust, since the enclosed filling traps heat and raw meat cannot be checked easily. Thick pieces of poultry need enough time for the centre to reach a safe temperature.

“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.

You might also like

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesCorned BeefCorned Beef87 recipesBeef BrothBeef Broth67 recipes