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Veal and Ham Patties

A savory patty made from cooked veal and ham, wrapped in puff pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 Patties

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the meat into small dice.

  2. Add salt, pepper, and moisten with stock or water.

Assemble the patties

  1. Make the puff paste as directed and roll it out thinly.

  2. Stamp out rounds larger than the patty pans, reserving 12 for covers.

  3. Place a round in each patty pan, fill with meat, and moisten edges with water.

  4. Top with the reserved rounds, press edges together, notch them, and make a hole in the center.

Bake

  1. Brush with egg or milk and bake for about 20 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Veal + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main meat filling, giving the patties their savory body.
Ham
Adds salty, savory flavor that complements the veal in the filling.
Puff paste
Bakes into flaky, layered pastry that encloses the filling.
Stock or water
Moistens the diced meat so the filling stays juicy while baking.

The step that matters

Press the edges and cut the hole in the center. Sealing the edges keeps juices inside the patty, and the center hole lets steam escape so the pastry bakes crisp rather than soggy or bursting.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

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