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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with veal, ham, eggs, parsley, lemon, and stock, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal and Ham 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

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

Make the filling

  1. In a basin, mix the veal, ham, hard‑boiled eggs, parsley, lemon rind, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and stock until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pie dish, raising the filling higher in the center than at the sides.

Bake

  1. Cover the filling with rough puff pastry.

  2. Bake for over an hour, until the veal is well cooked.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Ham + eggtop 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
Provides the main meaty body of the filling, which sets firm as it cooks.
Ham
Adds savory, salty flavor and a firmer, chewy texture to the filling.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a soft, set texture that binds the filling slices.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and eggs.
Stock
Supplies moisture that keeps the filling juicy as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the veal through. Veal must reach a safe, fully cooked state inside the pastry. The pie is covered, so the filling cooks slowly and the center can stay underdone if the bake is cut short. Checking that the veal is well cooked matters more than the clock.

“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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