Skip to main content
Main

Veal Pot-pie

A savory pie with veal, crust, and gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Veal Pot-pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the veal

  1. Season the veal with coarse sea salt and butter.

  2. Cook the veal for 1.5 hours.

Make the crust

  1. In the last 30 minutes, prepare the crust by mixing flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and butter.

  2. Add sweet milk to form a soft dough and roll into small biscuits.

Cook and serve

  1. When the veal is boiling, place the biscuits on top, cover tightly, and boil for 30 minutes without lifting the lid.

  2. Remove the meat and biscuits, then thicken the gravy with flour and more butter.

  3. Let the gravy boil and pour it over the meat before serving.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Veal
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender during long, gentle simmering.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the biscuit dough and thickens the gravy.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so baking soda reacts, helping the biscuits rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, lightening the biscuits.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that tenderizes the biscuit dough and enriches the gravy.

The step that matters

Keeping the lid on while the biscuits steam. Lifting the lid releases steam and heat, which can stop the biscuits from rising and cooking through evenly. Keeping the pot tightly covered holds steady heat and moisture so the dough sets into light, cooked dumplings.

“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.

You might also like

Veal PattiesVeal Patties50 recipesBeef, Mutton, or Veal BrothBeef, Mutton, or Veal Broth6 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes