Name: Veal Pot Pie
Ingredients: veal; potatoes; Lima beans; eggplant; peach; meringue; lady cake

Why it works: Potato and eggplant work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Veal Pot Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

Prepare the veal by cutting it into pieces.
Cook the veal until tender.
Layer the cooked veal in a pie dish.
Add boiled potatoes and lima beans on top.
Slice the eggplant and layer it over the meat and vegetables.

Bake and serve

Cover with a pie crust and bake until golden brown.
Serve with peach meringue and lady cake for dessert.

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.

Potato + eggplanttop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together103 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Potato + lima beanstop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together62 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Potato + peachtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together71 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Veal + potatotop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together343 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Veal + lima beanstop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together32 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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 layer and provides the savory base of the pie.
Potatoes: Add starch and bulk, helping the filling hold its body under the crust.
Lima beans: Add texture and earthy flavor to the layered filling.
Eggplant: Adds soft, moist body that absorbs flavors from the meat and vegetables.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, potato, lima beans, eggplant):

Lemonfits better
Pumpkinfits better
Coconutfits better
Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, potato, lima beans, eggplant. 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.