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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie filled with veal, ham, eggs, parsley, lemon, and stock, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Veal and 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. Cut the veal and ham into pieces no larger than ½ inch square.

  2. Remove the shell from the eggs and cut each into quarters.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the veal, ham, eggs, parsley, lemon rind, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and stock until well combined.

  2. Transfer the mixture to a pie dish, mounding it higher in the center than at the sides.

  3. Cover with rough puff pastry and bake at 400°F (200°C) for over an hour, until the veal is well cooked.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 recipes

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

  5. Egg + hamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,526 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meaty body and firm texture once fully cooked through.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour and a firmer, chewy bite to the filling.
Eggs
Hard-boiled eggs add set structure and a creamy texture to the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich meat and balances its flavour.
Stock or water
Supplies moisture that keeps the filling juicy during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until the veal is fully cooked. The record calls for baking for over an hour, so the pastry can brown while the thick filling cooks through. Veal is lean and can dry out if overbaked, so check that it is well cooked but still moist.

“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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