Skip to main content
Main

Veal Pie

A savory pie made with veal, sweetbreads, oysters, ham, and puff pastry, finished with gravy and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove 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 ↓

Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut steaks from the neck or breast of veal and season with pepper, coarse sea salt, nutmeg, and ground clove.

  2. Slice the sweetbreads and season them the same way.

  3. Line the edge of a dish with puff pastry.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the veal, hard‑boiled egg yolks, sweetbreads, and oysters in the dish.

  2. Top with thin slices of ham and fill the dish with water.

  3. Cover the dish and bake until done.

Finish

  1. After baking, pour in a few spoonfuls of veal gravy and cream through a funnel, thickened with flour.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Oyster + hamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Veal steaks
Provide the main meat, which becomes tender and rich during long, covered baking.
Sweetbreads
Add a soft, creamy texture and delicate flavour to the filling.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and a crumbly, creamy texture to the filling.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour that seasons the filling.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky crust that rises and browns in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the added gravy and cream into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Pour in the gravy and cream after baking. Adding the thickened liquid after baking keeps the sauce from splitting or boiling away under long heat, and keeps the pastry crisp. Cream can curdle if it boils hard, so it should be poured in once the pie is cooked.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, pepper, nutmeg, egg, oyster, ham, cream. 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.

More veal pie recipes

Cold 6 See all 129 →

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipes