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A Ham Pie

A savory pie made with sliced ham, a fowl, hard‑boiled egg yolks, and topped with a crust, served with beef gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,232 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

A Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make a pie crust and line a pie dish with it.

Assemble

  1. Layer the sliced ham in the dish.

  2. Sprinkle pepper over the ham.

  3. Season the fowl's cavity with pepper and a little coarse sea salt.

  4. Place the fowl on top of the ham.

  5. Add the yolks of hard-boiled eggs on top of the fowl.

  6. Cover with more ham.

  7. Sprinkle pepper over the ham.

  8. Cover with the pie crust.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Once baked, fill the pie with rich beef gravy.

  3. 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. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  2. Truffle + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,900 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Pepper + beeftop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

  5. Ham + truffletop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together516 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

Cold boiled ham
Forms the main meat layers and adds savory flavor to the pie.
Young fowl
Provides the central meat, which cooks through within the pie.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolks add richness and a creamy texture between the layers.
Rich beef gravy
Adds moisture and savory depth when poured in after baking.

The step that matters

Fill the pie with gravy after baking. Adding gravy after baking keeps the crust crisp and prevents the liquid from soaking the pastry, while the hot gravy keeps the filling moist and 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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