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Olive Pie

A savory pie made with veal, egg yolks, bread crumbs, lemon peel, spices, gravy, butter, and pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Olive Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the veal

  1. Rub the veal slices with egg yolks and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Add lemon peel, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to the veal.

  3. Roll the veal slices tightly and place them in a pewter dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour gravy over the veal and top with butter.

  2. Make a light pastry and lay it around the dish.

  3. Roll out the lid to 1/2 inch thick and place it on top.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the pie and cooks to a tender, meaty texture.
Egg yolks
Bind the bread crumbs to the veal and add richness to the filling.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the filling hold together as it cooks.
Gravy
Keeps the veal moist and adds savory flavor during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture in the filling.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Veal must reach a safe internal temperature throughout the thick rolled slices. Underbaking leaves the centre raw, while overbaking dries the meat and toughens the proteins.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, egg, bread, lemon, pepper, butter. 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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