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Beef and Veal Pie

A savory pie filled with minced beef, veal, salt pork, onion, and stock, topped with butter and crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and pork match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,690 recipes. Both carry 12-methyltridecanal, which smells tallowy, beefy. The science ↓

Beef and Veal Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mince the beef, veal, salt pork, and onion together.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add the meat stock and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

  2. Add bits of butter on top.

  3. Cover with soda crust or puff paste.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes; 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. Beef + porktop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,690 recipes

    Shared aroma: 12-methyltridecanal (tallowy, beefy).

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Veal + porktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,930 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

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

What each ingredient does

Beef and veal
Provides the main body and savory flavor of the filling.
Salt pork
Adds fat and savory richness to the minced meat.
Meat stock
Adds moisture to the filling so it stays juicy while baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness that enriches the filling and browning of the top.
Soda crust or puff paste
Forms the covering that seals in the filling and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Covering the filling with the crust. The crust must seal fully over the filling so steam stays inside and the meat cooks through evenly. Gaps let juices escape and dry the filling.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Asparagusabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, veal, pork, pepper, meat, butter, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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