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Meat Pies and Puddings

A savory pie filled with calf's foot, ham, egg yolks, and optional forcemeat balls, baked in a crust.

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 ↓

Meat Pies and Puddings

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the filling

  1. Slice the calf's foot into ¼ inch thick pieces.

  2. Season the meat with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and grated nutmeg.

Assemble the pie

  1. Layer kidney at the bottom of a pie dish, followed by minced ham and calf's foot slices, repeating until nearly full.

  2. Add hard-boiled yolks and forcemeat balls on top.

  3. Pour veal stock mixed with lemon juice over the filling.

Bake

  1. Line the edges of the dish with pie crust, cover it, and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. For forcemeat balls, mince oysters and mix with breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon rind, and seasonings, binding with an egg yolk and oyster liquor.

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

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

  4. Ham + vealtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 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

Calf's foot
Provides gelatin that helps the filling set into a firm, sliceable texture as it cools.
Veal stock
Adds moisture and savoury body, and its gelatin helps the filling hold together.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a soft, creamy texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and stock.
Ham
Contributes savoury, salty flavour that seasons the layers.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, egg, veal, 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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