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Veal and Ham Pie

A savory pie with stewed veal, ham, forcemeat, egg slices, and gravy, topped with puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Veal and Ham 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 veal

  1. Stew the veal very slowly for about 30 minutes.

  2. Cut the stewed veal into small square pieces about 2 inches long.

Layer the pie

  1. Place the veal at the bottom of a dish and season with pepper, salt, mace, nutmeg, and lemon peel.

  2. Add a layer of ham, then a layer of forcemeat, and top with slices of egg.

  3. Fill the dish with the remaining layers, finishing with a top layer of ham.

  4. Pour in the gravy and cover with puff pastry, decorating the top with leaves.

  5. Brush the crust with egg yolk before baking.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  2. After baking, pour in the remaining gravy through a funnel.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Veal + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,264 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
Forms the main meat body, which turns tender and moist with slow stewing.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty flavour that contrasts with the mild veal.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, creamy texture to the layers.
Gravy
Keeps the filling moist and adds savoury depth as it sets into the pie.
Forcemeat
Binds the layers together and adds a seasoned, tender texture.

The step that matters

Stewing the veal slowly. Gentle, low-heat stewing breaks down the connective tissue in veal gradually, making it tender. Rapid boiling toughens the meat and dries it out, so it will not soften well in the baked pie.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, egg):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, pepper, nutmeg, lemon, 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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