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Veal-and-Ham Pie

A savory pie with layers of veal, ham, herbs, nutmeg, mace, eggs, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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-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.

Assemble

  1. Cut the veal into square pieces and layer them in a pie dish.

  2. Sprinkle with herbs, spices, lemon peel, and sliced yolks of hard-boiled eggs.

  3. Add a layer of thinly sliced ham on top.

  4. Repeat layering until the dish is full, ensuring ham is on top.

  5. Cover the edge of the dish with puff pastry.

  6. Pour in 1 pint of water.

  7. Seal with crust.

  8. Decorate with leaves.

  9. Brush with egg yolk.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour or longer if the pie is large.

  2. After baking, pour in nearly 1 pint of strong gravy through a funnel.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 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 cutlets
Forms the main body of the pie and becomes tender during the long bake.
Boiled ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour that contrasts with the mild veal.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and body to the filling as the yolks blend with the meat juices.
Puff pastry
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a crisp crust.
Strong gravy
Poured in after baking to moisten the filling and add concentrated meaty flavour.

The step that matters

Pouring in the gravy after baking. Gravy added before baking would be lost or dilute the crust. Adding it through a funnel after baking fills the pie with liquid while the pastry stays crisp.

Swap the mace

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

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

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