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Veal Pie

A savory pie with veal chops, sauce, and pastry top.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the veal

  1. Cut the best end of a loin of veal into thin chops.

  2. Remove part of the bone and some fat from the veal.

  3. Season the veal with coarse sea salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter in a pan and brown the veal chops.

  2. Sprinkle flour over the veal and stir to coat.

  3. Add water to create a sauce and simmer until thickened.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a pie dish and cover with pastry for the top crust.

  2. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the crust is golden brown.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Loin of veal
Provides the meat that forms the main body of the pie.
Butter
Fat for browning the veal, adding richness and savory flavor.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it simmers.
Pastry for top crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a crisp top.

The step that matters

Brown the veal chops in butter. Browning creates flavorful compounds through the Maillard reaction. Crowding the pan or stirring too early steams the meat instead, leaving it pale and less flavorful.

“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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