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To Make a Savory Lamb or Veal Pie

A puff pastry pie filled with seasoned lamb or veal, oysters, force‑meat balls, egg yolks, asparagus, and a wine gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make a Savory Lamb or Veal Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Fill the pie

  1. Prepare a puff pastry crust.

  2. Cut the meat into pieces and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Layer the seasoned meat in the crust with lamb stones, oysters, force-meat balls, hard-boiled egg yolks, and asparagus tips. Dot the filling with butter and cover with the lid.

Bake and finish

  1. Place in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1.5 hours.

  2. In a separate pot, combine the gravy, oyster liquor, red wine, and grated nutmeg. Mix in the yolks of 2-3 beaten eggs and stir continuously until it boils.

  3. Pour the liquor into the pie, cover with the lid again, and serve hot.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Lamb or veal
Provides the main meat, whose juices and fat flavour the filling as it cooks.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the sauce and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling, carrying flavour and keeping the meat moist.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, balancing the richness of the meat and gravy.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour to the filling and its liquor.
Gravy
Supplies moisture and body to the sauce poured into the pie.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the boiling sauce. Egg yolks thicken by setting gently. If the sauce is heated too hard or too fast after the yolks go in, they can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, oyster, meat, egg):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, pepper, clove, nutmeg, oyster, meat, 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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