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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with veal, ham, onions, herbs, and hard‑boiled eggs, topped with a butter‑and‑lard pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 68,474 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Veal and Ham Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA medium oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a medium oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the gravy and eggs

  1. Remove the bone from the fillet and chop it with the outer trimmings of the meat, onion, and herbs.

  2. Place the mixture in a saucepan, cover with water, and simmer to make gravy.

  3. Hard-boil the eggs.

  4. Cool the eggs in cold water to make peeling easier.

Make the pastry

  1. Combine flour, half the butter, half the lard, and a little salt in a large bowl.

  2. Mix well with a fork.

  3. Gradually add a little water.

  4. Mix until combined, avoiding using your hands.

  5. Roll out the dough three times, adding a little butter and lard each time, then chill until needed.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pie dish, layer the meat and halved hard-boiled eggs, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Strain the cooled gravy, remove any fat, and pour it over the meat.

  3. Cover with the pastry and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry once mixed with water and rolled.
Butter
Adds richness and flakiness to the pastry when layered during rolling.
Lard
Adds tenderness and flakiness to the pastry through its fat content.
Veal cutlet
Provides the main meat filling, which is cooked down into the gravy.
Gammon of bacon
Adds savoury, salty flavour to the meat filling.
Eggs
Set firm when hard-boiled and add substance to the filling.

The step that matters

Rolling the pastry with added fat. Folding and rolling the dough with butter and lard in layers creates flaky pastry. Overworking the dough or letting it warm too much can melt the fat into it and make the crust tough rather than flaky.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, veal, egg, pepper. 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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