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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with veal, ham, mushrooms, and eggs, topped with pastry and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the veal and ham into convenient pieces.

  2. Prepare a short or puff pastry and line a pie dish with it.

Make the gravy

  1. Sweat the mushrooms and parsley in butter with a little flour.

  2. Add the stock and ketchup, then bring the mixture to a boil and set it aside.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the veal and ham alternately in the pie, finishing with ham and egg.

  2. If desired, add grated lemon peel or other optional ingredients.

  3. Strain all but ⅓ cup of the gravy through the hole at the top of the pie, then cover the hole with a decorative piece of pastry.

  4. Bake, then once baked, remove the pastry ornament.

Finish and serve

  1. Heat the remaining gravy, strain it into the pie, cover the hole again, and serve.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Veal
Forms the main meat body, becoming tender and juicy during slow cooking.
Ham or bacon
Adds salty, savoury flavour and fat that enriches the meat and gravy.
Butter
Carries the mushrooms and parsley and enriches the flavour of the gravy base.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock mixture into a smooth gravy.
Eggs
Add richness and set firm when cooked, giving body to the filling.
Stock
Provides the liquid base of the gravy and adds savoury depth.

The step that matters

Straining the gravy into the pie. Gravy poured in after baking must be hot so it does not chill the meat and pastry. Straining removes bits that could block the vent and leave a cloudy, lumpy sauce.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, mushroom, butter, flour, ketchup, egg):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, mushroom, butter, flour, ketchup, 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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