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Squab Pot-pie

A savory pie with squab, salt pork, potatoes, and short pie crust, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pork and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,668 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Squab Pot-pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Cut the salt pork into dice.

  2. Divide the squabs into pieces at the joints and remove the skin.

  3. Cut the potatoes into small squares.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a deep baking dish, combine the pork, potatoes, and squabs.

  2. Season with salt, white pepper, and a dash of mace or nutmeg.

  3. Add enough hot water to cover the ingredients.

  4. Cover with short pie-crust and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes.

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. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Pork + squabtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Pork + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,565 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Potato + macetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together288 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt pork
Renders fat as it bakes, flavouring the broth and the meat around it.
Squabs
Provide the main meat, whose juices and fat enrich the broth under the crust.
Potatoes
Absorb the savoury juices and thicken the filling as their starch softens.
Short pie-crust
Seals the dish so the filling steams and cooks in its own moisture.

The step that matters

Covering with pie-crust and baking. The crust must seal the dish tightly so the filling steams and the squab cooks through. A leaky crust lets the liquid evaporate and leaves the meat dry.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pork, squab, potato, mace):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pork, squab, potato, mace. 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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