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To Make a Savory Lamb or Veal Pie

A savory pie with puff pastry crust filled with seasoned lamb or veal and optional ingredients, topped with pastry and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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.

Prepare the pie

  1. Prepare a puff pastry crust.

  2. Cut the meat into pieces.

  3. Season the meat with pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, cloves, and nutmeg.

  4. Layer the seasoned meat in the crust with lamb stones, sweetbreads, oysters, forcemeat balls, hard-boiled egg yolks, and boiled asparagus tops.

  5. Dot the filling with butter.

  6. Cover with the pastry lid.

Make the liquor and bake

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

  2. In a saucepan, combine the gravy, oyster liquor, red wine, and grated nutmeg.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Keep stirring until it boils.

  5. Pour the hot liquor into the pie.

  6. Cover with the lid again.

  7. 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
Forms the main body of the filling, giving the pie its meaty texture and savoury flavour.
Puff pastry crust
Forms a flaky, layered crust that bakes golden and encloses the filling.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the hot liquor, they thicken it and give a rich, smooth sauce.
Butter
Dotted over the filling, it adds richness and moisture as it melts during baking.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy-based liquor.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the boiling liquor. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently but can scramble if they get too hot or are added without constant stirring. Keep stirring as the mixture comes to a boil so it turns smooth and thick rather than lumpy.

Swap the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, pepper, mace, clove, nutmeg, oyster, egg):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

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