Name: Veal and Ham Pie
Ingredients: 2 pounds veal cutlet; pepper to taste; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; 1 slice raw or dressed ham; forced or sausage meat (to taste); stewed button mushrooms (to taste); 3 hard-boiled egg yolks; ½ cup water

Why it works: Pepper and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,580 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Cut the veal cutlet into medium-sized pieces.
Season the veal with pepper and a little salt.

Assemble

Layer the veal and ham slices alternately in a dish.
Add some forced or sausage meat on top.
Include stewed button mushrooms and the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs.

Bake

Pour in the water and proceed to bake as you would a Rump-Steak Pie.

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.

Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together13,580 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ham + meattop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,095 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Veal + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,446 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
Meat + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,423 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ham + mushroomtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,486 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal cutlet: Meat whose proteins firm as it bakes, giving the filling its body.
Ham: Cured, savoury meat that adds salty depth to the filling.
Forced or sausage meat: Fatty minced meat that adds richness and moisture to the filling.
Stewed button mushrooms: Adds earthy savour and moisture to the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks: Add richness and help bind the filling as they set.

“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.