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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with veal and ham, encased in a lard-based pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the hot-water pastry

  1. Combine lard, water, and salt in a small pan.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil and boil for 1 minute.

  3. Pour the mixture into the center of the flour. Stir with a knife.

  4. Knead quickly until it forms a paste.

  5. Roll out the paste on a floured board into a round shape.

  6. Place the rolled dough on a jar or block to cool.

Prepare the filling

  1. Cut the meat into very small pieces.

  2. Remove all skin from the meat.

  3. Season the meat with ground mace, pepper, cayenne, and salt.

Assemble and bake

  1. Carefully remove the pastry from the jar.

  2. Fill the pastry with the seasoned meat.

  3. Cover with a pastry lid. Trim the edges neatly and decorate with trimmings.

  4. Brush the top with beaten egg.

  5. Tie a band of paper around the pie.

  6. Bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for 1 hour.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Veal + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,761 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry when mixed with the hot liquid fat.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the pastry short and tender.
Veal
Provides the main savoury meat filling.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the meat filling.
Beaten egg
Gives the top crust a glossy, browned finish when baked.

The step that matters

Pouring the boiling mixture into the flour and kneading quickly. Hot water and fat partly gelatinise the starch and make the dough workable while warm. If it cools before kneading, the paste becomes stiff and cracks, so it should be worked quickly while still warm.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, veal, ham, pepper, 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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