Name: Ham and Veal Pie
Ingredients: thinly sliced ham; thinly sliced veal; hard-boiled eggs, sliced; coarse sea salt; black pepper; parsley, chopped; Veal Consomme; Pastry

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Ham and 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

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Fill the dish

Arrange alternate layers of thinly sliced ham and veal in a pie dish.
On each layer of veal, add a row of sliced hard-boiled eggs.
Season each layer with salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of parsley.
Once filled, pour veal consommé into the dish.

Cover and bake

Line and cover the pie with pastry.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,264 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + parsleytop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,766 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,049 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

Thinly sliced ham: Forms the savoury meat layers of the pie.
Thinly sliced veal: Forms the meat layers and adds rich, savoury flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add a firm, creamy texture and mild richness between the meat layers.
Pastry: Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form the crust.

“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.